2024 Football Season - The quest for the CFP

Yep. But the REAL MINNESOTA STATE plays D2 in Mankato. And they are traditionally solid.

The real Minnesota State got Coach Fox a job with an NFL expansion team in Orlando.

Yeah. But his girlfriend left him and married Captain BJ Hunnicutt after his discharge from the Army.

Notre Dame #7 in the preseason coaches poll

Memphis and Tulane are competing for one spot. They could split which would be ideal. App State and Liberty play each other.

We will need some results to break our way, but don’t be scared by those lists of “15 G5 playoff contenders” - realistically there will only be a few left come Nov/Dec

In other Notre Dame news, their starting LT just got injured and is out for the year.

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Except for when Big Ben destroyed them in the bowl game!

Exactly. We’re undefeated against Louisville. Tell the Cardinals to come to Yager.

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That was in Mobile

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I know we are all biased to our areas but obviously the most important thing for Miami is the guarantee but I dont think it makes sense for Miami to fly to Washington or Oregon or California for a buy game when there are plenty of local options.

That is a long flight and the chance of success is small - and the game would likely start at 1030 with the BTN trying to fill programming

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Was just pointing out there will be a decent amount of parity and any one of those teams can make noise. Maybe Tulane takes the spot Memphis thinks they will get

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We don’t even go to places like Nebraska, Tennessee, North Carolina, or Maryland. We have the lightest geographical footprint in the entire FBS. And we can’t even get those nearby fans clamoring to keep us within 300 miles to come to Oxford to fill a 24,000 seat stadium. Any sense of a national brand we may have developed 25 years ago - and any athletics connection to more distant alumni bases - has long sense vanished.

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I think our game at Rutgers next year belies some of this criticism. It is a very logical game for reaching out to one of our larger and more influential alumni groups the New York Redhawks.

Games vs Northwestern, Notre Dame and Wisconsin are all excellent tools for working with our largest group of alumni outside of Ohio the Chicagoland diaspora.

A game versus Nebraska or Tennessee doesn’t have as much value for alumni relationships.

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Rutgers is definitely a game in an important alumni base, as were the games at Army. I threw Nebraska and Tennessee in because of distance - in the vein of Indiana, Illinois or Wisconsin. Maryland or Navy would get Baltimore/Washington. There are lots of alumni in North Carolina. Our games at UNC in the 70s, 80s, 90s and in 2002 were well-atttended.

There are also many influential alumni in both the LA and SF areas. Playing in places outside the MAC footprint affords the university national visibility.

As a very esteemed and or influential alum living in The Bay Area, I’d delight in watching us toast Cal and Stanford. Both very mediocre in football. And we’d get those sweet coins and bills.

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I think Kent State shows that a national schedule doesn’t mean anything if you suck. People will take notice if we play and beat good teams even if they’re close to Oxford, especially if it’s on a national broadcast.

To Sayler’s credit he’s been better over time with scheduling a more manageable OOC schedule without sacrificing a payday. The likes of UMass, Northwestern and upcoming teams like Rutgers, Purdue, and Pitt are way less likely to be a rough matchup versus OSU, Iowa, and Michigan (not sure if B2 scheduled any of those).

Unlike Kent, we don’t suck. Especially over the last five years. Eastern Michigan went on the road, got a big payday and beat Arizona State. Bowling Green traveled down to Georgia Tech, got paid and beat the Jackets. We could do that, too.

To be fair, Herm Edward’s staffers were leaking all sorts of information to teams the season EMU beat them

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I watched that game. EMU beat them in every phase. I know that wasn’t a good Devils team but people have suggested it’s better to cherry pick poor performing P4 teams than to get rolled at Ohio State, Michigan and Alabama.

I’d like to see us beat a P4 team at Yager like Ohio beat Iowa State in Athens last year.

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I do think we have more west coast alumni then some people think. Would love seeing a game on the west coast every few years.

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