ASUonmoney with scheduling
Karl Benson stood on a stage in New Orleans a few months ago and made grand statements for how he thought Sun Belt Conference nonconference football schedules should be constructed.
Sun Belt teams, the league commissioner said, needed to “remove the addiction” to games against teams from
the Power Five conferences, games that come with hefty
financial benefits but with little chance for victory. Instead, Benson said, schools should try to schedule more games against teams from the other Group of Five conferences: the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference and the Mountain West.
“Those are the games that we really need to focus on,” Benson said.
Benson wasn’t speaking to every school in the league. Some, like Arkansas State, had already set forth such a strategy.
“I feel like we were ahead of the conference on this,” ASU Athletic Director Terry Mohajir said.
ASU will play at MAC member Toledo at 6 p.m. Central Saturday in a game that fulfills Benson’s request and is a continuation of ASU’s recent strategy of playing teams in what Benson refers to as its “peer conferences.”
ASU has played against teams from the AAC and the Mountain West the past three seasons, and have future series scheduled against two teams from the AAC (SMU and Tulsa) and one from the Mountain West (UNLV) in addition to Toledo’s return trip to Jonesboro and ASU’s trip to Utah State next season.
It’s a slight change from ASU’s previous strategy. Saturday’s game will be ASU’s 20th nonconference game against teams outside the Power Five since joining the Sun Belt in 2001, and seven of those games have been against regional rival Memphis.
The new-found emphasis is two-fold. First, it gives ASU its most accurate gauge of where it is heading into the Sun Belt season. Second, it could lead to more money for conference schools.
When the College Football Playoff was adopted for the 2014 season, the Group of Five leagues were given one spot in the bowls attached to the playoffs, or “contract bowls” as they are often referred. Boise State, a member of the Mountain West, was the representative last year and beat Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl.
That inclusion provides the conference of that team an extra $4 million. Also, a ranking system created by the five conferences decides distribution of College Football Playoff funds at the end of the season. That ranking system isn’t made public but is configured by representatives from each of the five leagues.
Last year, according to the NCAA’s website, the Sun Belt received $11.9 million from the playoff, fifth among the five conferences.
Games like Saturday’s matchup could boost the Sun Belt’s ranking and provide more cash to member schools.
“Matchups with the MAC, the C-USA, the AAC and the Mountain West are significant within our league,” Mohajir said. “Those are direct results in the year that effect the end-of-the-year rankings for financial incentives.”
The competitive aspect plays a part, too. ASU lost 55-6 at Southern California, a member of the Pacific-12, and 27-20 to Missouri, a member of the SEC, this season. In the 15 seasons since the Sun Belt formed as a football league, ASU is 1-34 against teams from the Power Five conferences. In the same time, ASU is 8-11 against nonconference teams outside of the Power Five.
Saturday’s game could provide ASU with even greater boost in clout considering Toledo’s season. The Rockets beat Arkansas — ranked No. 18 by The Associated Press at the time — Sept. 12 in Little Rock and Iowa State in double overtime last week. Some analysts are projecting Toledo to be the Group of Five’s representative in the contract bowls this season.
“We keep talking about being visible nationally, having a national brand, people recognizing [us],” ASU Coach Blake Anderson said. “We want to be the best team in the Group of Five, and they’re the highest-ranked Group of Five team in the country.
“If we want to be that, we’ve got to be able to beat that.”
Mohajir said he believes such matchups are so important that he’d like to schedule three games against Group of Five teams and one FCS team — ASU plays Central Arkansas next season and Arkansas-Pine Bluff in 2017 — and eliminate the need for Power Five games, but ASU’s budget doesn’t allow for that yet.
Mohajir said his desire to rekindle the Memphis rivalry remains, and he’d like to get regional teams like Louisiana Tech, Southern Miss, Alabama-Birmingham and Tulane on the schedule.
Toledo isn’t a regional team, but its recent success would make an ASU victory noticeable as well as potentially profitable.
“It would definitely help,” Mohajir said. “They’re a really good program and a really good team. I don’t have to tell anybody in the state of Arkansas that Toledo is a pretty good opponent.”