08-09-2023, 12:55 PM
(08-09-2023, 12:43 PM)Mick Wrote:(08-09-2023, 11:11 AM)msqueri Wrote: Sadly I think it's wishful thinking to suggest that the travel issues can be substantially managed. We can try to mitigate them but it's unavoidable that it would be a massive additive cost to the athletic department and that it would be perennial, structural physical handicap for the athletes.
The body clock is the body clock. Human bodies and when in the day they're most ready to play football aren't things we can cheat. Something our great, good, mediocre, and bad coaches have in common is that they suck playing east. Let's go to the tape (times listed all Pacific):
1995 East Carolina (9am) - loss
1996 Wisconsin (9:30am) - loss
1996 Michigan State (11am) - win
1998 Notre Dame (11:30am) - loss
1999 Texas (9am) - loss
2000 Notre Dame (11:30am) - loss
2002 Boston College (12:30pm) - loss
2002 Notre Dame (10:30am) - loss
2004 Notre Dame (11:30am) - loss
2005 Navy (3pm) - eeked out a lethargic win, thank goodness it was so luckily late in the day
2006 Notre Dame (11:30am) - loss
2008 TCU (10am) - loss
2008 Notre Dame (11:30am) - loss
2009 Wake Forest (9am) - loss
2009 Oklahoma (11am) - loss
2010 Notre Dame (12:30pm) - win, and note that this is a somewhat later start time than previously in South Bend
2010 Virginia Tech (5pm) - win, and note that this is a MUCH later start time than the others
2011 Duke (12:30pm) - win, and note that it's at least afternoon
2012 Notre Dame (12:30pm) - loss
2013 Army (9am) - win, albeit lethargic against an insanely outgunned service academy
2014 Notre Dame (12:30pm) - loss
2015 Northwestern (9am) - loss
2016 Notre Dame (4:30pm) - win, and note the MUCH later start time than any other previous game in South Bend
2016 North Carolina (11am) - win, albeit lethargic
2017 TCU (6pm) - loss
2018 Notre Dame (4:30pm) - loss
2018 Pitt (11am) - win
2019 UCF (12:30pm) - loss
2021 Vanderbilt (5pm) - win, and note that this is a MUCH later start time than the others and against a terrible team
2022 Notre Dame (4:30pm)- win, and note the MUCH later start time than losses in South Bend
And that's to say nothing of football and basketball struggling even in Utah and Colorado.
It is what it is. I'm not saying this to criticize our administration. They didn't create time zones. Sometimes you have to play east, and in our current situation we may have to affiliate with a conference that will require a lot of travel east. As somebody who lives back east I love the chance to go to these games. I went to 13 of these in a row. It's good for the players, fans, and recruiting to not cloister ourselves in Palo Alto. But reality is reality. These games are extremely hard.
Shaw was actually really great at this, relatively speaking. Willingham was 1-5. Teevens was 0-3. Harris was 1-1 but never won in the morning. Harbaugh was 2-4 and never won in the morning. Shaw ended up 7-5 and had numerous wins in the morning. [I didn't include neutral site games here and I believe Shaw went 1-2 in neutral site morning games] While Shaw's track record is an encouraging sign that things can be done to give ourselves a fighting chance, note that 7-5 in road games out east compares extremely unfavorably to his 89-49 record in all other games combined.
This is what I can't get past. We would be consigning our players to a permanent, significant physical handicap that would make it very hard to field a .500 team.
Really have to make Big 10 work. That would be worse travel than now, but so much more manageable with 4-5 other former Pac-12 teams, and generally less far east for the rest too.
Body clock time is a real thing. Three time zones east is very difficult to get over, particularly if played before 1 p.m. body clock time.
My challenge with the Big 10 is that the dead sexy football schools are in the B1G-10 East (Mich, MSU, tOSU, Penn St, Maryland...and also Rutgers and Indiana). If we matched up with the Central zone B1G 10 schools, it's Illinois, Iowa, Minn, Nebr., NW, Purdue and Wisconsin. In other words, the central schools are yawners. Yeah, we didn't get much attendance for the Oregon State game. What kind of attendance would we get for Ill/Iowa/Minn?
If we got to the point where we would only play 2-3 games out of our time zone, then we could schedule them consecutively before school starts. That would be ideal.
Totally agree on travel and scheduling. Out of respect for the student athlete travel should be restricted to one time zone while school is in session (except for post season).