The Mailbag: Aug. 30th

Before I get into topics for the weekly Mailbag, let me express my excitement for the full return of college football.

The first weekend of college football is here, and despite a disappointing opening game for Arizona last Saturday, this is my favorite time of the year. The build up to Saturday each week for the next three months is what separates college football from any other sport. The tradition, pageantry and excitement that college football exemplifies reflects the uniqueness of the campuses and communities that make our nation great from coast to coast.

I have been a part of varying levels of success with Arizona football over the years, from 10-win seasons to three-win seasons. There is a lot more fun in a 10-win season for the Wildcats, but even in the more disappointing years, the best time of my week is waking up at 6 or 7 a.m. each Saturday to turn on College GameDay and gear up for a full day of games. Most weeks, those days are capped with Arizona playing late at night, and win or lose, I am always excited to be watching the Wildcats.

We don’t get to cheer on the Cats this week, but that is a good thing. There is a lot of season left, and the team needed this week to regroup whether it was a win or loss to open the year at Hawai’i. I explore that and more in my Mailbag below, but for now I wish everyone a happy opening weekend of the college football season.

If you haven’t done so, check out my “Picks to Click” with predictions for all games involving the Associated Press Top 25 and Pac-12 teams.

From Twitter, @EMOYProblems writes: What does the practice schedule look like this week since it is a bye week? Any extra off days or differences from a regular week?

This is an unusual bye week since it comes so early in the season, yet it was an important one for the team to have whether it won or lost at Hawai’i. The Wildcats were back in Tucson around 8 or 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, and for the players it was a rest and recovery day.

It was a well-timed bye week from the standpoint fall semester classes started on Monday, so the team is able to adjust to the in-season football and academic schedules without the stresses that go into another week of specific game preparation. For the older players, this does not take much adjustment, but for the true freshmen and transfers on campus for the first time, this is quite the adjustment. Even the players who were here in the spring have not gone through a season balancing their academic responsibilities with the routine of in-season practices, meetings and workouts.

From the practice perspective, the general routine for the next several months was established this week. Classes, tutoring, treatments and workouts would fill the morning and early afternoon hours, before a full team schedule takes over late afternoon. The team will always convene for meetings (team, position groups, special teams, etc) for an hour or two before practice. Film review of the Hawai’i game, the previous practice, upcoming opponent and other things relevant to the game plans will be reviewed and instilled. Then it’s out to practice for a couple hours with focus on cleaning up the fundamentals and schemes, while beginning to prepare for another game next week.

One of the points I highlighted in my preseason schedule breakdown was how these bye weeks would help in the development of younger players in the program. Coaches have the ability to not just play a lot of players in games, but adjust and experience with reps in practice during this bye week and the one coming up before conference play begins. Head coach Kevin Sumlin noted on his radio show that the team played a lot of players at Hawai’i, but that they’ll continue to play more going forward. That’s where a week like this is important to get some of the players that didn’t see the field much or at all ready for increased action against NAU.

Otherwise, the team should have a couple days off this weekend (they have to have at least one day off with no football obligations, which is typically Sunday). Then it will be back to work for game week next week. Monday (Labor Day) is a holiday for classes, but the team schedule should remain the same for afternoon meetings and evening practice. The rest of the week will be business as usual from the academic and football perspectives.

From Twitter, @UAZVoice writes: Would like to hear your opinion on conference games scheduled for Week 1. Personally I don’t like it. I realize that’s how it goes if an in-state OOC game can’t be scheduled in the “preseason”, but part of the challenge of CFB is the gauntlet of conf foes down the stretch.

Great question and comment here from Jeff Dean.

From the football perspective, I would not want to start a season against a conference opponent. The first game in college football is truly an unknown for almost every single team that takes the field. You won’t find a coach in the country comfortable with what he has until he sees his squad play against someone else.

That does not mean every coach or program is looking for a cakewalk, and games like Florida-Miami, Utah-BYU, Oregon-Auburn are not only great for the sport and the excitement that we fans enjoy, but those teams are going to better for playing those games win or lose.

With that said, every team wants to play for its conference championship at the end of the season, and taking an early loss before the team rounds into form can derail those aspirations.  That is because what a team looks like at the end of August or the first week of September is going to be vastly different than what that team looks like at the end of September and certainly come October and November in the heart of conference play. Which is why in a perfect world the non-conference portion of the schedule and the conference slate itself would be evenly separated.

But college football is not perfectly balanced. Each conference can determine how many conferences games its members must play (Pac-12 is nine), while some schools (BYU, Notre Dame, etc) are not even in conferences. Combine all of that with the television networks picking games and even creating them sometimes, and you wind up with the shuffling of conference schedules all across the country.

In the Pac-12, Stanford and USC complicate matters because of their long-term contracts of playing Notre Dame. These matchups are good for those schools and for the conference, so it is worth the scheduling headache that comes with structuring a conference schedule around the dates that Stanford/USC will play Notre Dame each year.

To get back to Jeff’s question and opinion, I agree. I would love three to four weeks of non-conference play across the country, then the last eight to ten weeks are all conference games. But unless there is a college football scheduling czar and all of the schools and conferences jumped on board, we are not going to see scheduling mainstreamed anytime soon.  The important thing is to consider the overall health and sustainability of college football for the long term.

To accomplish that, what you will see are more big programs playing better non-conference competition, not from the standpoint of positioning for the College Football Playoff, but to help fill seats. Almost every single program in the country is finding it harder and harder to fill stadiums. And while game times, length of games and ticket costs all factor into a decline in attendance, the surest way to get people into the stadium is make it a worthwhile, if not must-see, event.

Greg Byrne and Nick Saban are on board with this scheduling tactic at Alabama, and it will be good for college football. While the Crimson Tide only play eight conference games in the SEC, they will be looking to play multiple Power 5 opponents each season in the future.

In the Pac-12, everyone plays nine conference games, which is grueling. To Arizona’s credit, and much of this was done several years ago while Byrne was the AD here, the Wildcats have lined up Texas Tech, BYU, Kansas State, Mississippi State, Nebraska and Virginia Tech in the non-conference over the next decade.

So I believe the overall health of college football is good even if it is far from perfect in terms of the scheduling. The College Football Playoff is thriving from a ratings and revenue standpoint, and talks will continue to expand the playoff. That’s a debate for a different day.

For now, whether it’s Georgia-Vanderbilt playing on Saturday or a Power 5 team hosting an FCS team on opening weekend, I am just excited for football to be back.

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