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re: Bookmark : Stanford, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan St, and Minnesota fear SEC venues?
Posted on 10/16/14 at 6:23 am to Cheese Grits
Posted on 10/16/14 at 6:23 am to Cheese Grits
quote:Interesting thread, but surprised that no one has mentioned the biggest determining factor, and it is not fear.
Arkansas plays at Michigan in 2018 and Michgan comes to Fayetteville in 2019.
It is money. It is much more profitable to play teams that you do not have to have a home and home series in the non-conference schedule. The SEC does that, and most all conferences do that.
As a fan, I much prefer non-conference games between the Big 5 conferences, but wanting to maximize the number of home games (money), that is difficult. And unfortunately, almost impossible, if you have a rival that you play every year on a home and home basis. Iowa plays Iowa St every year, and many Hawkeye fans would love to see that not happen, so they could upgrade the non-conference part of the schedule.
I think also bowl tie-ins with a particular conference can also discourage regular season games between those conferences, so as not to increase the probability of rematches.
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Posted on 10/16/14 at 8:46 am to RazorHawk
quote:
RazorHawk
Thanks for the Iowa vs Iowa State games to the discussion and I edited the OP to include that information. Still much space between the mid 30's and the mid 70's when the series was not played. Any insight why this game was discontinued for so long?
As to the thread itself, it started with the fact Stanford had never played an SEC school at an SEC stadium. Part was in response to the new Vanderbilt coach (who came from Stanford) who is pushing for a series with his former employer. This lead to former games with Vanderbilt (similar academic school) and it turned out there were none. Which lead to the SEC as a whole with a similar result.
It was even odder as Stanford had played former SEC school Tulane in home and home series about 8 or 12 times. Also they had played Duke 4 times home and home and given Wake Forest a series as well. Since Stanford had shown a willingness to travel in the south for these other games it was curious why they had not also done so for Vanderbilt. From that basic question it went to this thread which attempted to find and define other schools with similar no shows in SEC venues.
As to the money, I tend to agree. Looking at the schools who had not played the SEC, Michigan seemed to be the worst offender as they were very bad at not honoring return trips to the SEC after the SEC schools had gone to the Big House on multiple occasions. Even Missouri (pre SEC) had made 4 such trips without a singe return to Columbia. Maybe this was just a common practice of Michigan during their long history.
The oddest one was Minnesota as their great pre war success was derived from the Coach who got the first back to back to back MNC in the country. Bernie Bierman coached for both Mississippi State and Tulane during the better years of the Green Wave. If any of the 5 schools listed in the OP should have played SEC schools in their stadiums he seems most probable to already know the venues and the environments.
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