This is something that began surfacing after the initial BCS rankings were released. In the true spirit of stereotype-based, Internet half-truth, the reason why Kansas State and Oregon canceled a planned series for 2011 and ’12 has already been painted as a Bill Snyder masterpiece.
Maybe so, but even the greatest artist can’t create without the tools to do so.
To give Snyder full credit isn’t fair to Oregon, which ducked the contract just as much as K-State did; so much so that the universities walked away from the agreement with no buyout money exchanging hands. With Pac-12 expansion (and its impending scheduling impact) in full-swing, Oregon’s then new athletic director Rob Mullens saw much less of a need for games/series like with K-State, which saw the possibility of nine Big 12 games on its horizon.
Then, less than two months after Oregon mutually agreed to part ways with both K-State and New Mexico, Georgia and the Ducks canceled a series for 2015-16, again with no buyout.
“I texted (Mullens) and asked him if they’d have any interest in canceling,” then-new Georgia AD Greg McGarity said. “And he said absolutely, he was gonna call us.”
In other words, while those games would have been fine in place, Oregon had its own reasons for walking away.
Despite that, Oregon media explained the mutual splits as other teams backing out (which, of course, is becoming today’s sexy conversation hook) and leaving the poor Ducks to scramble for opponents. (That’s a much easier issue to handle if Oregon was willing to ante up, or play neutral-site games. But, who wants to do that?) The lack of buyouts, as the explanation goes, were simply the Ducks trying to keep things “amicable” between the programs. In today’s cash-is-king, everybody-wants-seven-home-dates scheduling landscape, is anything done in the interest of staying amicable?
Of course not.
Regardless, for some to paint the cancellation as a fully purple one-off isn’t right. Snyder made the call, sure, but Oregon obviously was fine with letting all three 2012 non-conference opponents go (Montana State was granted an out, but it had to find a replacement) plus Georgia.
Perhaps Chip Kelly aside, all of those decisions were M-U-T-U-A-L.
On an off-chute…
If someone wants to use the Oregon cancellation as some misguided point toward K-State having a weaker schedule, technically it would be true. But, have them check Phil Steele, who pegged K-State’s slate, sans Oregon, in June as the 34th-toughest , while leaving the Ducks somewhere outside his Top 50. And, there are other charts out there, like this one, that say K-State’s scheduling artwork is much better than myth or Internet or both may suggest.
In the end, all of this makes for great fodder, but at least pretend to keep it in some context.
You left out that Oregon announced their game with LSU at ‘jerryworld’ to replace the game in Manhattan for 2011 within a month of the mutual ending of the two year K-State deal. Higher profile, more revenue to Oregon
Thanks for adding that. Oregon wants what everybody else does: 1) 7 home games; 2) 3 non-cons broken down to 1 BCS, 1 mid-major and somebody else. But, they also want to do it on the cheap if possible, and won’t schedule 1-and-1′s unless they get the first game at Autzen.
I don’t blame Oregon for its scheduling practices at all. Every team thinks this way. I just think it’s important to note that the agreement was broken mutually. That part seems to be getting left out for folks.
so the Miami Hurricanes aren’t a good enough out of conference opponent?
Then we have a real football conference with WVU, OU, Texas, TCU, ISU, OSU, Texas Tech.
It’s isn’t Snyder’s fault Oregon is in a very weak conference – ask WVU what it’s like to play in a real football conference.
Yes, Oregon was so eager to mutually back out of their games against Kansas State and Georgia to avoid future good teams that they went out and scheduled home and homes with Michigan State, Texas A&M and Ohio State.
I don’t think the reason they were backing out was for the reasons being mentioned. I think at the time the agreements were made, they were thinking in terms of what would be bigger draws — what would bring Oregon the most money. Dropping K-State and Montana State in favor of Michigan State, A&M, and tOSU are obviously bigger draws.
In recent years Ducks have played non-conf games against Michigan, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Michigan St. I don’t think they wanted to drop K-State but when Snyder wanted out of coming to Eugene, of course the trip to Manhattan was off.
Not going to matter in the rankings anyway. Here is what is going to happen: K State beats TT, Oregon beats Colorado, no change in rankings.
THEN on Nov. 3rd, Oregon beats #9 USC and K State beats unranked Oklahoma St. and Ducks jump back over K State in BCS and never look back. Ducks finish year with wins over ranked Stanford and Oregon St. and head to Miami to face Bama.