LSU football has two choices (re: big picture/scheduling)

good post.

do we make our own SEC schedule? other teams might not want to play SEC games that early in the season.

not really attacking your post. its just the first question that popped in my head.

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do we make our own SEC schedule?

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noonan, good point. We don't make our own SEC schedule (the SEC ultimately decides, and LSU is 1/12 of that process).

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other teams might not want to play SEC games that early in the season.

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True, but we almost always play MSU and Auburn before October. To make that a fixture on the schedule likely wouldn't ruffle their feathers. The only difference is one of the UGA/UK/USC/UT/VU games; putting that in September probably wouldn't bother either school that much.

Global warming is affecting the intensity and frequent occurance of hurricanes. We are fricked.

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Global warming is affecting the intensity and frequent occurance of hurricanes. We are fricked.

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thankfully when the earth turns back to a cooling cycle we won't have to worry about such things.

or is this the wrong board for such discussions?

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thankfully when the earth turns back to a cooling cycle we won't have to worry about such things. or is this the wrong board for such discussions?

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Snowball Earth is much worse.

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if the North Texas game is affected, five out of 11 home games in August/September will have been affected by Louisiana's climate.

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North Texas would be the third this year. We had four scheduled this year. Where do you get five of 11? You going all the way back to 2005? In that case, it would be more than five out of more than 11. In '06, we had four home games by the end of September, none of which were affected by weather. In '07, none of our three scheduled home games before the end of September were affected.

So, weather-affected games:

2008: 3/4 (AppSt, Troy, NTex)
2007: 0/3
2006: 0/4
2005: 3/3 (NTex, AzSt, Tenn)

I don't see anywhere you can start and end and wind up with five out of 11.

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a little lobbying with the SEC would have to occur, but certainly the SEC would oblige

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I doubt it. We'd be expecting three teams every year to play us in a conference game at a time when most prefer to be entertaining cupcakes. I don't think the SEC would force them to accommodate us.

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When LSU has to reschedule, LSU and the SEC are bound to lose money.

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LSU certainly loses money, but how does the SEC lose money? They don't get anything out of ticket sales/concessions/inflow of money to the local economy/etc.

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This schedule gives us four SEC games by the second week of October, which ultimately means maximum tv exposure

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CBS would throw a fit if we had half our conference games before mid-October. They don't even start doing college football until mid-September, which would mean they would have a reduced number of chances to televise one of the SEC's bigger TV drawing teams.

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in the first six to seven weeks of the season, we play four SEC teams. Then in the last six to seven weeks of the season, we play four more. It spreads out the SEC season pretty evenly, making it, in my opinion, more favorable.

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One problem, though, is that late in the season, when jockeying for position in the rankings against teams who are playing their biggest games of the season in October and November, we'll be playing a bunch of cupcakes and not impressing anybody. Better to play those early and then have a big game to show off at crunch time.

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Minimizing the hurricane threat and putting yourself in a better position to win the SEC? No-brainer.

Where am I going wrong?

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By assuming that

A) it will put us in a better position to win the SEC. No early cupcakes means no warm-ups for young players. Maybe the opponents would have the same problems when playing us, but they would all likely only have the one game (against us) that early, while we're playing half our conference games early;

and

B) that hurricanes will be a recurring disruption. This is the second year out of the last four that we've had this problem, but it's also the second year out of the last 44. Will hurricanes continue to affect us with this recent frequency? Are we sure enough of that to justify wholesale changes in our scheduling and the modification of the entire SEC's usual scheduling practices?

Good idea!

you put a lot of thought into that I bet. I don't see anything wrong with it.

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Where do you get five of 11? You going all the way back to 2005? In that case, it would be more than five out of more than 11. In '06, we had four home games by the end of September, none of which were affected by weather. In '07, none of our three scheduled home games before the end of September were affected.

So, weather-affected games:

2008: 3/4 (AppSt, Troy, NTex)
2007: 0/3
2006: 0/4
2005: 3/3 (NTex, AzSt, Tenn)

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Affected games in bold:

9/10/05 Arizona State
9/26/05 Tennessee
10/29/05 North Texas (scheduled for 9/3/05)
9/2/06 Louisiana-Lafayette
9/9/06 Arizona
9/23/06 Tulane
9/30/06 Mississippi State
9/8/07 Virginia Tech
9/15/07 Middle Tennessee State
9/22/07 South Carolina
8/30/08 Appalachian State
9/6/08 Troy
9/13/08 North Texas

I counted wrong. North Texas will make six out of 13. If that isn't reason enough to re-think the way you schedule gatherings of 90K+ people, what else do you need?