Underrated Contributor to NC - Easy Schedule
I have always been in favor of easiest schedule possible since the best way to make the CFB Playoffs was to go undefeated and the best way to go undefeated is to have the easiest possible schedule.
I figured once a 12 team playoff is implemented, it wouldn't matter much to have more difficult schedule since you can still get to the playoffs with 1 or even 2 losses. However, after the NC year that we just had I am not sure if that is true.
I believe there are three very good reasons to have the easiest possible schedule if at all possible.
The first reason is the same as before - as part of the Big 4 conferences, if you go undefeated or have only 1 loss, your entrance to the playoffs is almost guaranteed. A 2 loss team, even with a difficult schedule, will have to sweat it out to make the playoffs.
The second reason is that we had perhaps the most well-rested and healthy starters in all of NCAA due to the fact that they only had to play barely more than 50% of the snaps all year. Most of the games were over by the second quarter and the starters were watching the game from the sidelines.
The corollary to the above reason is that we were able to get a TON of experiences to back-ups and that was crucial for the team depth when we needed it the most in the playoffs and sets the team well for the future.
The third reason is that we were able to practice our base OSU defense for most of the season since we had so little regards for most of our opponents. We rarely had to adjust our defense for any specific offense (especially in Big Ten) since most were so pathetic. So we were able to get reps after reps for the scheme that we were going to use for The Game at the end of the season. These are college kids and more you can get them reps for a specific thing, better they are going to be. Keeping the schedule easy allows us to practice more for The Game.
I really cannot think of a single reason other than a season ticket holder benefit (so that they can resell tickets at higher price) for having more difficult schedule. I argue that going forward, we should to everything in our control to make sure that we have the easiest football schedule possible. What say you?
In that case, you are not going to want to be a Michigan fan for the foreseeable future.
10-2 next year would be a really, really good season.
We'll find out real quick, Fresno is not only a good team, Tedford is a great coach. Then we all know what week 2 brings.
Why? I think there is a very good chance that we lose 3 games next year. We just won NC, I have no problems with us stepping back from that level for the next few years.
I love basking in the national championship glow, but "I have no problems with us taking a step back for the next few years" is taking it a bit too far, even for me.
We don't have to be national title favorites, but I don't want to lose The Game or miss the playoffs for the next three years either.
No one wants to lose The Game, but with the amount of talent that we just lost to NFL (record setting!!!) and the amount of talent that OSU just retained/gained, no one should be surprised if we lose The Game this year.
With the amount of talent we're bringing back and our record against Day's Buckeyes I won't be surprised if we win The Game this year.
You can both acknowledge the reality of the situation and believe that Michigan should continue to be held to a high standard in the Sherrone era. Michigan will lose The Game again... perhaps it will be next year, but beyond that, if Michigan stops being a Top-10 program and slides back into the 10-25 range, I don't think Michigan fans should be "fine" with that.
I would be "fine" with that because we are a basketball school.
We have the defense to shut anyone down.
we need an offense to match.
There has been almost no reason to have a difficult schedule in recent years. If you're in the B1G or SEC, just win and you're in. Going forward, a tough schedule or marquee early season game gets you eyeballs and offseason hype which I think is good for recruiting, maybe? Otherwise, just play, have a good record, and you'll be in.
Meh. There was no team beating us last year unless we had to visit UGA, Texas or maybe Oregon early in the year.
I generally would agree with you, but UM’s balanced roster, defensive scheme and overall game control metrics, suggest it would have taken near perfect game from an opponent- probably on their field, or a significant injury for a loss to occur.
JJ was injured @ Maryland and against OSU, otherwise those games probably aren’t that close in score. Bama was only close because UMs special teams pissed down its leg and the offense was very sloppy (see missed wide open flea flicker).
The team was just better, deeper and more balanced as a group than anything CFB had to offer. The variance was very low with this team week to week.
But what if JJ hadn’t sat the 4Q of basically every game in Sept/Oct and had gotten hurt in one of them?
I think the bigger issue with a tough schedule is that you’re forced to play your starters more snaps, which can potentially mean more injuries.
GameBoy is what is wrong with college football. Winning the National Championship was great, but college football is cool because of regional rivalries. Beating OSU and winning the B1G was WAY more important than winning the NC this year, or making the playoffs the previous two years.
Playing #1 ND and #24 UCLA in 1989 was awesome despite Raghib Ismail. ...and then playing them again in 1990
Playing #7 ND and #1 FSU in 1991 was awesome despite FSU killing us.
Playing #3 ND and #7 Colorado in back to back weeks in 1994 was awesome despite the Kordell Stewart hail mary. (and unranked BC too.)
Those early season tough games were fantastic.
13-16 games is too many. What is the point of playing 3 soup cans at the beginning of the season? Play 10-12 games and the two teams with the best record/SOS get in to the championship game.
Beating OSU this past year was NOT more important than winning the NC. The team had already beat OSU the 2 years prior, they needed to get over the hump of winning a playoff game/the NC. In 2021, I would agree the most important game was beating OSU to get over that hump, but once that was done, the team needed to (and did) take the next step.
The Game is crazy, meeting Ohio in the B1G Title would be crazier and we gotta have subs if we face Ohio in the CFP.
If we face Ohio State in the CFP that is going to be either the best or the worst day of my life, full stop.
Defeating OSU is a "delicate" item. IF Michigan doesn't defeat OSU - Michigan doesn't make the CFP.
So, while I agree that winning the National Championship was the most important thing the team could have done - they don't get the opportunity without a victory over O$U.
Now - if the question becomes - what would you prefer - a loss to Ohio State and winning the national championship - OR - a win over Ohio State but a loss in the National Championship - hmmm, that's a tough one. My preference would be answer "C" - defeat OSU and win the NC.
Twelve teams next season will be interesting.
I'm in the opposite camp. I had nowhere near the nerves going up against Alabama or Washington that I did going up against Ohio State ... and have every year of my life.
There's a reason ESPN called that rivalry the best in American sports, and it is literally the biggest annual one-time-a-year meeting in American sports. UNC-Duke in basketball, Alabama-Auburn in football, Yankees-Red Sox in baseball ... nothing compares with it.
I loved the national championship, no doubt. But for me, beating Ohio State is absolutely priority No. 1 each and every year, and the idea that for some Michigan fans it's already become not such a big deal is insane.
Username checks out! Go Blue!
I agree that beating OSU is important. Which is why we should have the easiest out-of-conference schedule possible based on what we saw last year.
I don’t think there’s a correlation between Michigan’s OOC and defeating O$U.
And - giving the Buckeyes an “L” - has extra special significance and meaning. With the CFP and new B1G conference alignment - it might take on the SEC motto - It just means more…
Damn, Bo has reached out from the great beyond.
Bo said that winning the Big 10 was their goal every year, because that’s what he could control. It became a voting competition to see who gets to play after that.
WestQuad blames an MGoBlog poster for being what’s wrong with college football, but he hasn’t figured out that winning a playoff for the national championship outweighs winning the B1G. Doh!
I don't get your argument. What does playing Texas in out-of-conference schedule have anything to do with beating OSU or winning the BigTen?
My argument is that having the easier schedule makes it easier to beat OSU and thus winning the BigTen.
Yes, having a great out of conference game is great for college football, but it does not help us win against OSU or BigTen.
Your analysis that we should play soup cans to get in the playoffs is correct, and that sucks for college football. I’d rather play ND or another ranked team at home in September than play them in a neutral NFL dome 1000 miles away in January. It is a bad trade. Especially considering that we’re not guaranteed to play in that game.
this could be fixed by requiring a team to have 3-4 victories against ranked opponents to qualify for the playoffs.
think about it if everyone played soup cans you’d be sacrificing ~50 ranked opponent matchups on college campuses for ~11 playoff games.
My argument is that I'd prefer 12+ good games of Michigan football to four, the approximate number we got this year. Or, frankly, two, since neither PSU nor UW were terribly impressive teams.
Furthermore, if the path to the championship is to hide from all other competition, then the championship is meaningless and I'm not interested in it.
The only thing that could have made 2023 even better would have been to have had vanquished more big opponents along the way.
I don't know man. I've still got emotional damage from that '94 Colorado game. It did, however, make the '97 Colorado game a little sweeter.
No. Teams play to win the national championship. That’s why most of our upperclassmen came back. The national championship is the motivator. I have never heard anyone in sports with a legitimate chance to win the top prize say it is more important to win a rivalry matchup. The rivalry matters not just because you want to beat your rival but because winning holds the key to doing bigger and better things. And who cares about rivalries when the teams are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If that were so the whole country should tune into Harvard-Yale every year. The only game where this is not the case is Army-Navy because it symbolizes something that transcends college football and petty local rivalries on a national emotional level.
The UM-OSU rivalry is amazing, but it’s true significance was on display when more than bragging rights were on the line, as was the case in most of Harbaugh’s tenure- and gloriously high stakes victories the past 3 years.
But playing for victory in 1 game is very lil bro Sparty mentality. It’s all that mid level regional programs have, not a blue blood like UM. Now that we’re back from wandering in the wilderness, and CFB has changed, the goal should be to make the playoff every year and have a chance to go on a championship run. Do that and enough victories against OSU and B1G championships will be obtained in the process, but won’t be necessary any given year.
I don't love ESPN's FPI, and I wish I could get the rankings coming out of conference championship week, but Michigan played what ESPN has as the seventh toughest schedule in the country, in part because they played Penn State, Ohio State, Iowa, Alabama, and Washington. Plus UNLV and Bowling Green ended up being better than expected.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi/_/view/resume/sort/resume.avgsosrank/dir/asc
It was perceived as an easy schedule because that is how the narrative was set over the long off-season. It was not an easy one by the time every game was played.
That argues for easier schedule. The only part that we control is the out of conference opponents. The conference is tough enough, there is no need for us to schedule someone like Texas.
It argues for easier non-conference opponents and completely destroys what you wrote in the OP suggesting that the schedule was easy. Because it wasn’t.
If you meant “less challenging non-conference opponents,” you should have written that.
The only part of the schedule we control is out-of-conference. We scheduled nothing but cupcakes last season for OOC - hence "easy", compared to scheduling the likes of Texas this year, which definitely will not make our OOC "easy".
But even then, it's really not in our control. If we were doing basketball-style scheduling where you're making matchups in the off-season and can have a sense of what kind of team they might have, that would make more sense. But these games are scheduled years out.
To wit: Brady Hoke was still the coach when the home and home with Texas was announced!
https://fbschedules.com/michigan-texas-schedule-football-series-2024-2027/
(A reminder that as part of the dealmaking to get Texas into the SEC sooner, Michigan and Texas swapped the home games from that 2014 deal so FOX could have Texas at Michigan as Big Noon Saturday in Week 2. Which would have then given Michigan the usual seven home game slate for this coming season.)
Tell Texas in 2014 "Oh yeah, Michigan will be coming off a national title and you'll have made your first playoff the previous season." and they would have laughed at you.
It may be a coincidence - however, after the Conference Championship Games concluded last year - there werre sixteen teams with two or fewer losses. That group of sixteen included: James Madison, Liberty, SMU, and Tulane.
Of the other twelve - you have four SEC teams, three B1G teams, two Pac teams, two Big 12 teams, and one ACC team.
Effective the upcoming season - eleven of those twelve teams will be either B1G or SEC teams - the lone exception is FSU representing the ACC.
You will get down voted but I agree. The schedule allowed us to find our gear.
IDK why people are downvoting, having an easier schedule has obviously been the best way to make the CFP with only 4 teams. But it's really moot now with the new playoff format and the additional B1G teams.
Agreed. And people seem to forget that we didn't exactly romp against Bowling Green.
If JJ had had that kind of rough go (2 TD-3 INT) against a Power 5 team, our season might have looked dramatically different.
Michigan’s schedule wasn’t easy at all. We played a ton of excellent teams.
What the schedule *did* provide was a backload of weight. The early games were all minnows. And that did, indeed, give the team some flexibility in rotation and trying stuff.
But, easy? Michigan had a loaded finish, played most of the top defenses in the country and perhaps the top offense. It was incredibly hard. The wording of the title and OP suggests that the schedule was soft, and I find that repugnant.
Not overloading the front of the non-conf schedule? Though? I understand it. Because the later part is the schedule *is* difficult, and only more so now with the expanded conference.
That is my whole point. The only part of the schedule that we control is the out of conference games. The schedule is tough enough. There is no reason to schedule someone like Texas in the future.
Exactly. The B1G slate is hard enough (especially with the new teams), so why not load up the out of conference with cupcakes.
It says something strange that the OP seems to be suggesting that only "season ticket holder benefit" of playing a tougher schedule is ... ticket resale value. As if season ticket holders don't ... you know ... actually like seeing big games in Michigan Stadium. As if "financial profit" is the only possible way of determining value.
That's ... that's weird, to me. I used to love having us play 3-4-5 big games at home each year -- at least one legitimately good non-conference game (or two, sometimes, if one of them was Notre Dame), maybe Ohio State, and back when the Big Ten was a better conference, Penn State, Michigan State, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc.
Damn, man. Originally they started selling tickets to college football games because people simply enjoyed watching the games, and would pay for the pleasure. It seems like now the OP is suggesting the only reason people buy tickets is either to resell them at a profit, or ... to watch 50-point walkovers of teams like Eastern Carolina on the way to a national championship ... most of them won't be able to get tickets to.
Weird. In any event, put me in the "schedule more big games" camp, take away the super-loud pop music and other annoying "frills" of the game day (that do little more than justify the outrageous price hikes), and let those of us who simply enjoy watching football for its own sake do so.
Yes, the season ticket holder would enjoy better quality games, but that would be offset by the fact that we have a better chance at playoffs and watching the playoff game of much better quality (more on the line) at the end of the season or even win a NC, at which point we do not care who we played early in the season. So, I would say it kinda evens it out.
I think this is fair if you only care about a National title. But it also creates a less joyful, all or nothing experience where any close game is accompanied by hand wringing.
There aren't that many teams that make it through their regular season and CCG with two or fewer losses. There are often a couple / few G5 teams that are at the two (or fewer) loss record - but, further down the ranking.
If you're in a Power Five conference - especially, either the SEC or B1G - and, you finish the season (through the CCG) with two or fewer losses - you'll most likely be in the twelve team CFP.
So, what would I prefer - an "easy as can be" schedule until the month of November - OR - great games throughout the year with incredible matchups - as Michigan has for the upcoming season? Hmmm - i'd probably like a balance - some easier games to start the season and get the team gelling - and with some great matchups.
My guess is - Michigan will have the toughest - or second toughest - schedule in the country this season. Texas, USC, Oregon, at Washington, and Ohio State - is a tough slate. Florida's schedule finishes in pretty tough fashion playing Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss, and FSU in consecutive weeks to finish the season.
I'm fine with four tougher games a year - and, having three of those at home makes it even nicer.
Everything looks clearer in retrospect.
Imagine if Michigan doesn't win the Rose Bowl (which doesn't require that much imagination: arguably it's simply changing one play, the 4th down on U-M's last regulation drive).
Then there's a post on here saying "our easy OOC schedule was an underrated contributor to why we didn't succeed in the CFP. It made us soft."
And would that really be the case? Did that much change? The whole OOC schedule impacted how U-M converted/executed on one key play?
Tomato cans at the beginning, even with the 12-team (14? 16?) playoff.
You can rep exactly what you want to do without (much) fear of losing. You can rotate and rest starters, lessening the chances for injuries and giving your depth experience. You can even experiment with what you want to do in later games -- like we did on defense in 2023.
Our conference schedule is hard enough -- especially with us getting put in the marquee games as often as possible for the maximum cash grab. Schedule fairness? Nope, money for the conference.
Anyway, we are National Champions. I'm not putting much effort into thinking about how we will handle next season, especially with our QB situation as it stands now.
I really cannot think of a single reason other than a season ticket holder benefit (so that they can resell tickets at higher price) for having more difficult schedule. I argue that going forward, we should to everything in our control to make sure that we have the easiest football schedule possible. What say you?
As a season ticket holder, I love going to the stadium for big matchups. Nothing comes close to the atmosphere. Also, I have no plans of selling my tickets to anyone and for the amount they are charging, I don't feel like I'm getting my values worth by watching a glorified scrimmage.
Underrated Contributor to 2024/25 NC - Easy Schedule
Fixed it for you.
Seriously. All the playing time the backups got last season is going to pay off. The only problem spot I see on the roster is QB.