11-23-2015, 11:23 AM
You're not the first person I've heard suggest that each school be able to name a time before the season starts for a designated rivalry game and a homecoming game.
While teams are willing to bounce between the third and fourth Saturdays in November, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, no teams besides Stanford and the University of California have been forced to move a rivalry game to October. They are less powerful in negotiating. (And the conference may have decided after hearing all the complaints that that experiment was a failure not worth repeating.) Nevertheless, I think all schools would be interested in being able to announce to alumni a designated start time for homecoming. This would allow for activity planning, all that the residual effects that come with that. Teams don't tend to have homecoming on the same weekend, so it would be easier to set in advance than the rivalry weekend times.
While teams are willing to bounce between the third and fourth Saturdays in November, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, no teams besides Stanford and the University of California have been forced to move a rivalry game to October. They are less powerful in negotiating. (And the conference may have decided after hearing all the complaints that that experiment was a failure not worth repeating.) Nevertheless, I think all schools would be interested in being able to announce to alumni a designated start time for homecoming. This would allow for activity planning, all that the residual effects that come with that. Teams don't tend to have homecoming on the same weekend, so it would be easier to set in advance than the rivalry weekend times.