Are Quality Non-Conference Games Worth It?
In today’s age of 9 conference games, is scheduling a strong non-conference (especially on the road) opponent worth it? With 4 spots in the CFP pretty much reserved for 4 of the Power 5 conference champions or the best team from the conference with 1 or more loss; why risk an early season blemish at all?
Penn St and MSU played much, much weaker opponents this week; at home nonetheless and struggled mightily. Yet still they are in a much better position than Michigan and Washington for example. With 9 conference games and a tough division with an unbalanced crossover schedule, it seems that scheduling tough OOC games has a potential of a little reward or a lot of downside.
September 2nd, 2018 at 12:57 AM ^
Yes. Good football is what we want. Fight for good football. Schedule good football. Win the games.
September 2nd, 2018 at 12:58 AM ^
Warde is a nice guy but he has not fixed our fucked up road schedule. Come on dude Hackett would have handled that already.
September 2nd, 2018 at 1:00 AM ^
PSU MSU OSU and always always always the best crossover teams...did i mention always?? Im too the point that if we play crappy teams and msu is back to msu and OSU is down im 100% fine with that. Let the name Michigan and our preseason over hype do the work for once. If i could schedule Holy Cross instead tonight id do it in a heart beat. Maryland may be better than us right now.
September 2nd, 2018 at 1:32 AM ^
Based on what? Beating Texas at home? Texas is awful folks.
September 2nd, 2018 at 1:35 AM ^
Little secret: A mediocre team that falls flat against ND isn't going to magically turn into a national contender if they had played EMU instead.
Michigan wins this game, you're all 100% fine with the ND series.
September 2nd, 2018 at 2:09 AM ^
I love renewing this rivalry. The ND game is great for college football and great for Michigan.
It won't stop us from getting to the playoffs and if we had won we would have had a huge playoff chip.
ND is good, not great. Ohio State and Wisconsin are both much better than ND so it's a very tall order to make the playoffs now. I think we beat MSU now though, before this weekend I wasn't so sure, but that has more to do with MSU not being good than us being really good.
September 2nd, 2018 at 3:32 AM ^
After watching all 3 teams you mentioned, I disagree that Wisconsin is better. Maybe that is because I'm mad I lost money betting on Wisconsin to cover verse lowly Western Kentucky. Lol
September 2nd, 2018 at 3:50 AM ^
Playing random, tough OOC games is not worth it, but UM vs ND is worth it. A rivalry game with such a storied history is a big part of college football’s appeal. Just need to win.
The game tonight was a tough, tough loss - but the team can learn some crucial lessons to make themselves better.
September 2nd, 2018 at 3:59 AM ^
I’m probably the only one on this site who has for YEARS been advocating for playing cupcakes the first few weeks of the season..We will play 4+ teams ranked in the top 15 over the course of the season in the Big Ten we don’t need to schedule any team that can beat us in “pre season” we should have teams we can trounce 56-0 that way you can get more PT for backups which helps build depth, have The offense/ defense build confidence in themselves by blasting a team, find some plays that work, work out the kinks .. But nooooo people around here want to see us play hard teams and virtually be eliminated from the CFP with another loss
September 2nd, 2018 at 6:55 AM ^
This is a fair question. While it’s exciting to see these major non conference games to kick off the season, it’s not beneficial for the team that loses. Michigan can certainly find its way back into the playoff discussion since it has the 4th highest SOS, but most of the country will officially write us off until they see something special later in the season.
This loss also makes it so that Washington and Michigan can lose NO other games if they want to sniff the playoff discussion. That seems far fetched considering we play MSU, OSU, and Wisconsin all on the road.
Another consideration to your point is to see how much PSU and MSU struggled, but ultimately triumphed. Many teams lack chemistry and game speed on the first kickoff, so playing a beatable team helps to work out the kinks and allows for mistakes to be made. ND had much better team chemistry on both sides of the ball in the first half and it cost us the game. If the game went on for another 10 mins, I’m convinced we would have won as our chemistry was picking up while NDs had already peaked.
September 2nd, 2018 at 8:16 AM ^
It doesn't change anything. A 2 loss UM B1G championship team probably does make the playoffs this year. A 3 loss team certainly doesn't, but a 7-2 conference record most likely doesn't make Indy anyway, so there was no downside to scheduling ND.