A few thoughts and observations as August comes to a close.

Auburn has remade its out of conference (OOC) schedule, dropping, among others, a future series with Virginia Tech. There is, of course, the possibility that the Tigers are still smarting over the loss Tech hung on them in 1975 on the Plains, but more likely is the official word, which is the Auburn administration is seeking to maximize football revenues by maximizing its home schedule. Auburn sells 70,000 season tickets every year, and the coinage to be gained from not playing any OOC games away from Jordan-Hare Stadium far outweighs any possible guarantee that could be dangled by Tech or anybody else to lure them away from home. That money will pay for a lot of scholarships, salaries, Title IX expenses and general program upgrades, and makes a lot of sense in these economically-challenged times. 

This decision is being made by a number of schools, all state universities with huge stadiums and fan bases and no problem selling tickets no matter the opponent. LSU has had the �No Away OOC� policy in effect for years, since the cancellation of their series with Texas A&M, and only came to Tech because of the twelve games allowed last year and this. Michigan is another school that will no longer venture away from the Big House for any OOC opponent not named Notre Dame; expect Ohio State to follow suit. Economics is driving this trend, and it is one I wouldn�t be too awfully upset if Tech joined.

There has been much chatter over the years concerning Tech�s supposedly weak OOC schedule, some justified. It was beefed up last year, and while I certainly enjoyed watching LSU venture into Lane Stadium and tailgating with many of their really cool fans, I would have been there had the opponent had a direction of hyphen in its name. The caliber of the OOC has no bearing whatsoever on my decision to renew my season tickets year after year, and I suspect there will be few Hokies who would surrender their ticket sheets if a long-term 10-for-0 series with Kent State were announced. First and foremost, I am there to see Tech. 

Among the reasons for Tech�s historically weak OOC was the reluctance of other teams to play VT and the undeniable truth that it takes two to schedule a football game. It is now fact that the teams we most desired to schedule, those from the ACC, will, this time next year, be our conference opponents. They have been removed from the available OOC pool and I think it is safe to assume that there won�t be many home-and-homes signed any time soon with the remaining Big East schools. Throw in that few SEC teams will be scheduling away OOC games, and the number of obtainable area games is rapidly shrinking.

The South end zone expansion has had a very positive effect on football revenue, and so will the upcoming West Side expansion. More revenue will be needed, however, as Tech promised the ACC we would beef up our skimpy contributions to the so-called �Olympic� sports and our dismal expenditure on men�s basketball simply has to be increased. Tech�s football revenue stream is close to the point where it will be more desirable and feasible to no longer schedule home and away series but only buy OOC games with no returns. Once again, the Athletic Director has not requested my input on scheduling matters, but if he did, I would suggest attempting to obtain any high-profile home and away that might be procured with schools willing to play, such as ones with Penn State, Nebraska or highly visible West Coast schools such as UCLA and/or Southern Cal, otherwise I would fill the OOC with non-returnable games with the variety of mid-major conferences around, such as CUSA and our old standby, the MAC. I don�t particularly worry about SOS concerns, as that only applies for one game. Tech is heading to a conference where a football championship will involve beating both Miami and Florida State in the same year. If that is accomplished, there will be no problems with the SOS.

While on the subject of scheduling, there have been complaints voiced as once again JMU has popped up on the schedule. This is in keeping with Tech�s stated policy of playing a state I-AA school every four years as permissible under NCAA bowl eligibility rules. William and Mary will be paying us a visit in 2007. These routs can be a bit boring, and the argument can be made that a program of Tech�s stature no longer has any business playing a team from the lower classification. There is a longer view, however, and it is that by scheduling these schools Tech is being a good citizen of the Commonwealth. JMU and W&M have athletic bills to pay, too, and the paycheck they receive from being hammered by Tech goes a long way towards financing their programs. We have been the beneficiaries of big-picture thinking by the president of our archrival, and our athletic future is far more positive than it might have been because of it. Doing the same by helping out our lightly budgeted fellow state universities is the right thing to do.

The mess at Baylor continues to garner headlines, with new revelations coming almost daily of a rogue basketball program that was clearly out of control. John Markon of the Richmond Times-Dispatch recently wrote an excellent column on this situation, laying the blame on Baylor, a private school with limited financial resources, attempting to compete in the Big 12, with its preponderance of mega-budgeted large state universities. It was on the mark. Baylor had no business being included in the original Big 12, getting in through an avenue familiar to Tech fans, political pressure, which in Baylor�s case was applied by then Texas Governor Ann Richards, a Baylor alum.

In the long run, it doesn�t seem she did her alma mater any favors. The Bears do not have the funding necessary to compete in the Big XII, and the result has been Baylor�s name appearing at the bottom of conference standings. Baylor had experienced some football success in the old Southwest Conference, but as soon as SMU, Rice and TCU disappeared from their schedule, so did the victories. The Bears are dead weight in the Big 12, drawing a nice revenue check each year while contributing not the first nickel. Temple has been a Big East cash cow compared to Baylor, if for no other reason than the Owls got smaller checks. Nowhere in the Baylor mission statement does it mention a primary purpose of the university being to provide a punching bag for the rest of the Big 12.

Baylor basketball coach Dave Bliss certainly had no idea that the end result of the program he was running would be a player with two bullets in his skull, but it happened. This is a drastic result, but it came from Bliss attempting to accomplish the impossible, making Baylor competitive. The quickest way for a university president to touch off an alumni revolt is to suggest that his and their school can no longer compete at the top levels and perhaps should not continue to lose millions trying, but the poster school for de-emphasis is Baylor. They lose millions every year to lose badly, and it is time for them to think long and hard about a general de-emphasis of athletics.

Some sort of reincarnation of the old Southwest Conference with like-minded private schools such as SMU, TCU, Rice and Tulane would seem to be in their interest, instead of continuing to run up losses and incur what is likely to be major NCAA sanctions. Stanford and Notre Dame, and to a lesser extent Duke, have endowments and other resources that allow them to field competitive teams in the tough private school financial environment; Baylor does not.

The dominoes haven�t quite finished falling in this conference realignment season, but the next one will involve over the next decade private schools such as Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Fredo [if he can�t still worm his way into the ACC, and maybe even if he can] and perhaps even Wake Forest from the ACC bobbing up from the sea of red ink and last-place finishes and coming to the conclusion that it ain�t worth it any longer. It is time for Baylor to start the ball rolling.

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