Why Mark Speir is Missing the Point

This year, just like every year, the teams in North Carolina at the FBS level scheduled teams at the FCS level for one game. North Carolina scheduled Liberty. Duke played Elon. East Carolina played North Carolina Central. Wake played Gardner-Webb. Appalachian State played two games, Campbell and Liberty.

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Betsided

Yet these games came under fire from ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, all FBS vs FCS matchups really. The latest participant in one of these matchups, Western Carolina coach Mark Speir, responded angrily to those comments after his team got throttled by Alabama this weekend. As sometimes happens in these disagreements, the two sides are talking about two different things and two different interests.

First, let’s look at why these games exist. When the NCAA expanded FBS schedules to twelve games, they also changed a little remembered rule. When schedules were at eleven, the NCAA mandated that a win against an FCS opponent could count for bowl eligibility once every four years. That changed with the twelve game schedule, which said those wins count like any other win for bowl purposes (Unless you played two or more of those games, only the first one counts).

That change meant that there was no downside to scheduling FCS foes except abject humiliation when you got beat in one of those games. FCS foes have fewer scholarships and less talent in general. An FCS game is a cash grab. An FBS team gets an almost certain victory, a home game (FCS teams have no pull to get home-and-homes), and the chance to rest its top line guys.

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Garnet and Cocky

This was also a pretty good deal for FCS teams. They usually got a good bounty to play the game, might gain a little exposure, and give their guys the chance to play traditional football powers. The downside was that their team might get beaten up with injuries. Occasionally you might beat Virginia Tech or Michigan. That is most of what Western Carolina coach Mark Speir was talking about. It’s like a bowl game for these guys. Speir does not want to lose those opportunities. He is also relatively powerless to do anything about it. That probably fueled his frustration.

Herbstreit, on the other hand, is in a group of people who want college football at the FBS level to be the best that it can be. That means determining a true champion. Determining that true champion is easiest done when the best teams play each other. Those games cannot happen if FBS teams fill spots with FCS teams. Since FBS teams are unlikely to make that change on their own, folks like Herbstreit are frustrated.

Take 2004. Auburn was undefeated, jockeying for a spot in the BCS Championship. However they had played two FCS games during that season. That discounted their season in the minds of pollsters, and so they faced the Hokies in the Sugar Bowl rather than either Sooners or the Trojans in the Title Game. What if they had played a high ranking opponent instead? Would that resume lifted them into the title game? Sure they might have lost, but that would have helped settle things too.

One of the criticisms that gets leveled at this is that if FBS teams can’t or don’t schedule FCS teams, they will compensate by scheduling low level FBS teams. Would you rather see Duke play Elon or South Alabama?

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Alabama played a non-conference schedule of Conference USA opponents Southern Miss and Florida Atlantic, FCS Western Carolina, and the week 1 matchup with West Virginia. To be fair, Alabama sees a number of quality opponents in its conference. Yet my point is that Alabama currently schedules both FCS and weak FBS opposition.

Conference strength is cyclical, and so there will be times when your conference cannot elevate your team’s resume. Look at Ohio State this year. The Big Ten has disappointed, and Ohio State has non-conference wins against Navy, Kent State, and Cincinnati to bolster its case. If they had beaten Virginia Tech, they would not be outside the playoff right now. Yet they did not, and no single win can move them into the top four. But that is an argument against scheduling weak opponents, not necessarily FCS teams.

Eliminating FCS teams from FBS schedules would shrink the pool of available matchups, and that would necessarily increase the number of common opponents. That would give the committee more information to play with. Even if Alabama and Florida State did not replace Western Carolina or the Citadel with each other, they might end up playing say Georgia State. Then we could at least compare how each team played versus Georgia State.

The point here is that eliminating FCS matchups with FBS schools is better for the quality of FBS football. I understand the benefits reaped by FCS teams, but if we are concerned about determining the best team those games have to go. My apologies to Coach Speir, but his concerns may be considered irrelevant.