M&H had Jankovich on this morning but it was right when I had to leave my car to go into work. They were just starting to talk about the whole scheduling issue.

The interview is on the Podcast if you really want to hear it. I
just checked it out. It was a pretty good interview although
shorter than I had hoped. Regarding scheduling he just mentioned
that a lot of times it is overblown. Also he mentioned the fact that
it doesn't do a program to volunteer to play UNC for example and
just get hammered just to improve strength of schedule. Also,
it isn't easy to get quality opponents to come to Normal to play
because a higher profile team has a lot more to lose if they are
defeated. Although these are good points, they do need to
try to get some bigger teams on there. When I was in school
there I road tripped to Madison and watched them take on
Wisconsin during the regular season. At the very least they
should play either Illinois or Northwestern every other year.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

You are correct about scheduling out of conference. Not everyone is willing to take on Illinois State, Bradley, Illinois, Northwestern, DePaul, UIC, Loyola-Chicago, NIU or SIU for that matter...Why that is besides money, I'll never truly understand, but you'd think it would help the school's ability to recruit by scheduling marquee schools.

SHARK, this is one of the reasons I do enjoy the Bracket Buster games scheduled for ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN360, and other associated ESPN products. They were able to get over 100 teams a competitive matchup simply by waiting until the season had mostly unfolded to match teams of similar capabilities against each other. This helps out teams like an Illinois State by getting them up against a team like Niagara. Of course, you still need to win the games you are scheduled in, but this truly does give "bubble" teams at least one legitimate OOC game late in the year.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas