Falcon Tidbits
A few Falcon tidbits....
Coach Dakich says in The Blade that the team is rebounding well from the debacle in Buffalo. On the bus ride home.... After the game, Dakich said, "we handled it just like a win," watching movies on the bus as is post-game protocol after a road victory.
Former Falcon D-Coordinator Tim Beckman left OSU (where he coached defensive backs) and is now the defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State. Congratulations to him. Tim is a great guy and someone you like to see succeed. When he left, I noted that while there was debate about how good a coach he was while he was here (surprise, surprise), it is unlikely Jim Tressel hires any guys who can't coach football. Ditto Oklahoma State.
The system is blinking red on MAC football scheduling. Oddly enough, the news is coming out of Boise, but here is what it says:
"The Mid-American Conference is working on some different variations related to Boise," Bowling Green athletic director Greg Christopher said.
Bowling Green dropped last year's game with Boise State at the MAC's request because of another scheduling conflict. That led to Boise State playing at Utah.
Bowling Green played at Boise State in 2005 and is scheduled to return here in 2008. Christopher said he isn't sure if the 2008 game will be played, either.
He said he'd be disappointed to miss a chance to bring the Fiesta Bowl-champion Broncos to Ohio, but he can't afford to be picky. The MAC adds Temple this year, which creates a seven-team division and a six-team division. That unbalance has created scheduling headaches.
The MAC office, Christopher said, is "heavily involved" in the Falcons' scheduling.
"Right now we're trying to find a schedule that fits," Christopher said. "Who it ends up being is second almost to something that fits with the broader schedule we're trying to put together."
Here is the difficulty. Temple is a MAC member this year, in the East. There are now (as mentioned above) seven MAC teams in one division and six in the West. We already know the MAC office is full of lawyers and apologists, but apparently they need someone versed in quantum mechanics to figure out how to get an eight game MAC schedule with full in-division coverage and cross over games.
Add to that the lost flexibility that is caused by existing out of conference contracts, and you have a clusterf*** of the first order.
First thing you do, of course, is start breaking those contracts. Of course, that makes the MAC member who had that game mad. So, you try to make it up to them, which often involves moving another team and then this domino effect begins. (Every sitcom ever written has used this plot).
At one point, we thought BG had Boise and Navy coming here, and we would play @Minn and @BC. Well, the Boise game is on life support, and Navy has released its schedule and they ain't playing us. Rumors are that we may not even be able to add a I-AA team at this date, and may have to play a seventh road game...major disappointment for our fans.
The other rumor is that the MAC may go to a seven-game conference schedule, compounding the problems with OOC scheduling and increasing the liklihood that the MAC will play conference teams in games that don't count in the standings. (OU and CMU have already announced OOC schedules of four games--I assume to protect themselves from the MAC office screwing with their schedule).
I don't fully understand what is going on. But it doesn't look good. I fear that we will have as bad a schedule as last year--let's hope we play on Saturday at least once.
I am going to wait to see how it pans out before I pass judgment. Perhaps it will work out. One thing is clear...any difficulty at having a 13th team could have been anticipated. I understand we wanted WKU or MTSU, but, sadly, the Sun Belt appears to have won that battle.
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