Early schedule has its benefits
Mike Gundy maintains his preference for Saturday football, even as his Cowboys prepare for a Thursday-Friday start to the schedule.
“I want to play Saturday games,” Gundy said. “I want to play eight games at home, and I want to play at 2 o’clock (p.m.). That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s what college football is.”
So, what gives this season, when Oklahoma State opens the season with a Thursday-night special against Tulsa, then follows with a road game at South Alabama the next Friday?
“Television pays the money, and we have to do what’s best,” Gundy said.
That’s actually a twopronged answer, better broken down this way:
“Television pays the money.” “We have to do what’s best.”
The Big 12 Conference urges its members to occasionally take advantage of prime weeknight TV slots, for the money and the spotlight exposure. So there was opportunity for OSU to do just that.
Before moving the games, OSU-Tulsa would have appeared regionally on one of the Fox affiliates, and OSU-South Alabama would have
been relegated to ESPN3, or online. Now both will air on national broadcasts, with the opener on FS1 and the game at South Alabama airing on ESPN2.
As for the second part of the answer — doing what’s best — this is where much strategy came in to play, including managing Labor Day weekend.
A year ago, when the Cowboys routed Southeastern Louisiana 61-7 in their opener, the game played to a lackluster student crowd and an overall season-low home attendance of 50,079 on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. Whether a trend or not, OSU saw Thursday as an opportunity to play while the students were still on campus, before possibly bolting for home for a long weekend.
The scheduling of backto-back weeknight games
was actually linked, again strategically.
The South Alabama contest is the first of two straight significant road trips for the Cowboys, with the second, at Pittsburgh, an expected challenge against a squad returning nine starters from a bowl team that also hung around in Stillwater before falling, 45-38.
As constructed, the schedule gives OSU an extra day off before each of the early two road games.
“The science of putting 75 guys on an airplane and traveling halfway across the country, and playing a game, and then coming back, and then doing it again the next week,” Gundy said, “whether we like it or not it can fatigue them and it can be a little bit of a factor.”
Gundy addressed the
early schedule during OSU’s media day, when asked about the conflict the weeknight games can create for fans of both the Cowboys and high school football. Gundy fully understands the conflict, as his son Gunnar is set to be the quarterback at Stillwater High, which opens its season at Edmond Memorial on Aug. 31 — the same day OSU faces Tulsa.
Gundy has said he doesn’t prefer to play opposite high school football. And this year, should be considered an exception, not a rule for going forward.
It’s a chance to appease the Big 12, upgrade the television profile and ease travel demands.
“You kinda kill two birds with one stone,” Gundy said.