⚡ CFB Dashboard

It’s hard to pass up the kind of payday we can get from an SC game, but from a strictly competitive standpoint, I think we’re better off steering clear of the top level P4’s for now. As many have noted, the Top 25 boys are just getting Top 25ier and it would take a really crazy game to beat them…and even staying close can sometimes be a challenge. There’s a lot more football til the CFP field is selected, but with no one better than Boise still left on our schedule, I have to wonder if that 38-0 SC score might come back to bite us in the end. The earlier a loss is on your schedule, the less it tends to affect the perception of your postseason “worth,” but 38-0 still kinda says these guys can’t hang with the big boys. And at that point, no one really cares if it was our first game and SC’s second. In a perfect world, I would say a good OOC is one game against a middling P4 that we can beat on a good day or at least make it respectable, one game against a low P4/high G6 that is about on par with us (preferably at home), one game against a low/mid G6 that we’re favored to win (like Hoser or Sac State), and one game against a decent (but not too good) FCS team that should be a W and allow us to work a few things out in the process. It’s a fine balance between (1) playing teams that will help your SOS AND that you’re still capable of beating, and (2) playing teams that you can probably count as W’s if you show up to play. This SHOULD allow us at least a 3-1 OOC record with no blowout losses, and maybe even 4-0 with a good team and a little luck. And that should provide us with a reasonably respectable OOC SOS that should also set us up well enough in the rankings that a good conference run should put us right in the thick of the CFP conversation at the end. That is admittedly a helluva lot of ‘shoulds,’ and only a few glitches can change a lot. But you want your schedule to give you the best chance to end up where you want to be if you do everything right. All that said, the world ISN’T perfect, and the job of having to piece your OOC together years in advance and not all at the same time means it can hard to balance out your OOC just right. And teams that seem like they’re at a certain level when you schedule them could be at a different level by the time you actually play them. Circling back to the beginning, tho, the other kicker is can you really afford to pass up the money from a “big boy” game. It’s almost like making an investment in yourself. Is a $1 million reduction in game revenue worth it to possibly set yourself for a CFP bid and all the direct and indirect revenue that would come back to you that way. As we know, Fresno State doesn’t have unlimited resources to fund its long, slow road up the college football food chain. But if it does endeavor to do so, OOC scheduling may be a small, but possibly significant part of it. None of us really know why the school moved its ‘27 Hoser game to later on. It will be interesting to see what they have up their sleeve. Are they looking for another payday game, or something that will set up the OOC balance better.