Big Matchups Dwindle Down to Precious Few

Back in what now seems like the dawn of time, in 1970, the NCAA voted to allow its top division schools to add an 11th game to football schedules that had been limited for the most part to 10 games, plus a bowl if a school earned its way into the nine—yes there were only nine—major post-season games.
Several schools took advantage right away. Arkansas, coming off a 9-2 season and a loss in the “Game of the Decade” for the 1960s against Texas, hosted Stanford, a team on its way to the Rose Bowl with the Heisman Trophy winner-in-waiting in quarterback Jim Plunkett. Stanford prevailed 34-28 to launch eight wins in its opening nine games.
No one could have asked for a better intersectional matchup to fill that extra space on the slate, except perhaps another pivotal game played on the same September Saturday in 1970. It was the now-famous visit of defending Rose Bowl champion Southern California to Birmingham, Ala., where the Trojans became the first racially-integrated team to visit Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide. The Trojans, with an all-black backfield led by quarterback Jimmy Jones and fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham, walloped Alabama 42-21 (after leading 32-7 in the third quarter), and as legend supposedly tells, paved the way for African-American players at Bama.
However one views the historical impact of USC’s trip to Birmingham, it and the Arkansas-Stanford game typified the adventurous intersectional challenges in the 1970s. September 1970 was littered with such matchups: Baylor-Missouri, Washington State-Kansas, Oklahoma State-Mississippi State, Wake Forest-Nebraska, Oklahoma-SMU, Baylor-Army, Syracuse-Houston, Oregon-Illinois, Colorado-Indiana, Kansas State-Kentucky, Arizona-Michigan, Wisconsin-Oklahoma, UCLA-Pitt, TCU-Purdue, Nebraska-USC, SMU-Tennessee, Michigan State-Washington, Kansas State-Arizona State, Indiana-California, Penn State-Colorado, Tulane-Illinois, Air Force-Missouri, Army-Nebraska, Oregon State-Oklahoma, Northwestern-UCLA, and Michigan-Washington.
Intersectional fun became as much a 1970s trend as disco music and bell-bottomed plaid pants. Alabama soon scheduled visits from Missouri and Washington in 1975 as well as home-and-home encounters with Nebraska and Notre Dame later in the decade. Ohio State played Colorado, North Carolina, UCLA, and Penn State. Notre Dame and Penn State inked a 12-year annual deal that launched play in 1981. These special matchups were the norm, and college football was far the better for it.
Let’s call Maine
Nowadays, every FBS (formerly Division 1-A) school has the opportunity to schedule 12 games. How has that extra game turned out? Does Alabama seek out USC? Does Nebraska call Alabama? Frankly, no. Very rarely does the athletic director look to a traditional powerhouse to create a more attractive schedule. Usually, the question is: “Who has the phone number for Maine?”
Back when Penn State, then an undervalued Eastern independent power, sought no. 1 votes but was being ignored by poll voters despite a bushel full of undefeated seasons, the Nittany Lions took matters into hand and replaced Army, Navy, Colgate, Temple, and Ohio University with Nebraska, Miami, Iowa, Ohio State, Alabama, and Notre Dame.
Today, there is so little incentive to seek out tough opponents like Penn State’s image-building half-dozen of yesteryear. There is always Arkansas State, Eastern Michigan, Louisiana-Monroe, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, and San Jose State to beat up. If low-level FBS teams are completely booked there is the succulent smorgasbord offered up by FCS (formerly Division 1-AA) teams looking for a big payday in front of a six-digit capacity crowd. These include such treats as Coastal Carolina, Eastern Washington, Gardner-Webb, North Dakota State, Southern Illinois, and Wofford. Can the NAIA be far behind?
In fact, Penn State, which won 12 of 13 games last year and could be undefeated this season, has booked a 2009 out-of-conference slate of Akron, Temple, Syracuse (a team with a good history but down and out at the present), and Eastern Illinois of the FCS. The Nittany Lions are not alone.
Little Incentive
There is little incentive for Penn State or anybody else in a conference, like Penn State’s Big Ten, with an automatic bid from the Bowl Championship Series to consider snarling foes like Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Southern California, or Texas.
Who is at fault? How about the polls that insist on publishing preseason editions based solely on past reputation? Really, what happened in June to solidify Florida’s claim on no. 1, Texas’s on no. 2, or Penn State’s on no.8 as reflected in the USATODAY Coaches Poll? Can’t the polls start at mid-season in October? Or at least can’t the voters reconsider their choices after watching four or five weeks? Preseason polls aren’t awful in and of themselves. What truly is criminal is the fact that voters rigidly cling to their preseason “genius” with all their might. Should an unranked team from a BCS conference like West Virginia, Miami, or Wisconsin sweep through their season undefeated, it would take an awfully peculiar twist in voting to have them unseat a preseason top-10 team that also goes undefeated. Yet, how do we know Miami isn’t better than Texas?
So, it is a far better thing for a team to do to go undefeated against a so-so collection than to risk a single loss against a top team.
Football fans, raise a toast to that small group of adventurers (notably Brigham Young and Virginia Tech) out there taking risks in 2009. Here’s to the handful of potentially great intersectional matchups that bring together pairs of preseason top 25 teams. In September they include: Alabama-Virginia Tech on Thursday, Sept. 3, BYU-Oklahoma and Georgia-Oklahoma State on the first Saturday of the season, Sept. 5, and Nebraska-Virginia Tech, Florida State-BYU, and Utah-Oregon on Sept. 19. Too bad it is such a short list.
Bob Boyles