From 2006 through 2022 (skipping 2020), Miami’s Massey Composite annual rating has averaged 103rd in FBS, or better than only 18% of all teams. The top three MAC schools in those sixteen seasons have averaged 66th and better than 48% of teams respectively. Massey is just a composite, but the broad point remains - the issue is that we’ve shat the bed for 15+ years compared to the best of our conference, if we were a top three MAC program in that period we’d still lose more than not to UC with how they’ve been but it’d be more like 4-12 with mostly competitive losses versus 0-16 and blowouts most years.
Removing UC from our schedule does little to address the broader problem, even if you replace with a UMass type program for an easy game you’re just artificially adding a win to our schedule without actually improving things. We can only control what we can so if UC wants to end things then that’s their choice, but it’s on us to be competitive again.
And I vividly recall B2 telling a group of about 10-12 “influential” alums at a meeting held in what passed for a conference room in the innards of Yager that “there is no reason that Miami cannot dominate in FB and rise in stature in the same way Boise has.”
I only advocate ending the series if the dynamics of the home and home ends. The schools are 30 miles apart. UC should be grateful for the cheap away game
I suppose we could host a UC home game, but we could just start winning more games and increasing fan interest…I fondly remember the BG and Marshall games of 2003. We don’t need UC to draw crowds to MIami, especially if we wanted the crowd to be majority Miami…
If we can show a breath of life and win one or two of the remaining games in the current contract, I’m still in the camp of wanting to retain a semblance of this series if it can be done on a relatively equitable manner. (especially if we can get UC to play in Oxford).
If it is financially practical( I would love to see the numbers) a yearly game at Paul Brown has a lot of advantages.
We would be the only G5 team to play an annual game vs. A P5 opponent other than Colorado vs. Colorado State.
A yearly game in Cincinnati at an NFL stadium is a tremendous recruiting tool. No other MAC school has anything comparable and it is a real selling point, particularly for Cincinnati area kids.
In spite of recent events i believe we would be likely to have a higher winning percentage than a random buy game vs a random P5 opponent. Paul Brown is hardly neutral but if it is sold to both fan bases it would be likely to have 50.000 attendees with over 17,000 of them in red and white. A neutral field and one third of the fans offers a better opportunity for a win than visiting a comparable opponents home field.
Once we give it up it is gone. It is hard to project the future of college football. This game is unique amongst our peers and while it has been a competitive bust lately I can easily see a future where it would be greatly missed.
I think the perfect example is CSU and Colorado. Colorado wins like 75% of the time but I doubt CSU fans are begging for a 1x1 series with UTEP instead
