Appalachian State Football Schedules 2 SEC teams for Future
Scheduling is important. Strong scheduling will ultimately help your team over humps of image or doubt. With that in mind, Appalachian State football has scheduled games with their two closest Southeastern Conference neighbors, Georgia and Tennessee for upcoming years.
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The Mountaineers will travel to the behemoth Neyland Stadium in Knoxville to play the Volunteers in the season opener of 2016. Oddly enough, Appalachian State has never played its neighbor in football ever. That means someone is going to get border war bragging rights until the next time that the Mountaineers will play the Vols.
The Mountaineers have already made one trip down to Georgia just last year. Still, Appalachian State will return to the hedges of Sanford Stadium in Athens in 2017. The Bulldogs easily handled App State last year for a 45-6 victory.
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Normally I would criticize the two SEC schools for scheduling a Sun Belt opponent, but I like to see App State take on the big boys. Tennessee and Georgia are logical regional opponents. Whether App will be ready for either those games is left to the future. There is one example locally of scheduling hard games and building up to them.
That example is East Carolina. They have taken great opportunities to measure themselves against the West Virginias, Virginia Techs, North Carolinas, and North Carolina States of the world. And right now that is paying off big time. ECU did not manage to beat South Carolina, but they beat Virginia Tech away, and they whipped North Carolina at home. This year they could do big things. They could not do those things if their schedule had been different.
We’ll let App interim athletic director Rick Beasley sum it up. He said, “Playing at Tennessee and Georgia is exciting for everyone associated with our football program…These games give our coaches and student-athletes a great opportunity to compete against top-notch Southeastern Conference teams at two of college football’s most historic stadiums and allows App Nation to make short trips to support the Mountaineers in those famous venues.”