Topic: Someone tell ESPN CFB Daily, Louisville was on our schedule...

[_sturt_]

All good if we were a school in the same situation as K-State was at that time... maybe like the program we played on Saturday. But if you're in a state of mediocrity like we'd been for ten years, that's something different. Our path to the cusp of something exceptional wasn't K-State like.

[dshoe]

Same person had half the board believing Texas Cowards that wanted no part of Firin' Byron had other reasons for not accepting our offer to travel to THEIR place instead for the first game on their open date.

Agenda's, agenda's. Always agenda's.

p2m

You don't know what you are talking about on that one either....

No agenda, no agenda, no agenda

[HerdnClt]

Beating #6 K-State gave Marshall great National recognition. The Herd had them beaten in Huntington too until " the pass." The Herd played toe to toe with Ohio State until Nuggent kicked the 55 yarder. Karma came back last week as he jerked a 37 yarder against the Panthers wide right that would have won the game.. Wish those kicks were reversed. Nevertheless, after thumping East Carolina  and Maryland with basically same teams, we need to stay focused and believe all will work out.

[goherd24]

ESPN and their talking heads are biased toward their property. Of course their will be no official line that they are.

Dshoe hates criticism of ESPN, but the bias is most definitely there. I wouldn't expect anything less. Just wait til the access bowl stuff starts.... youll see an all out campaign for ECU

[herdman]

No way a 2 loss ECU team gets in. None. A one loss ECU team very likely is in over Marshall with no losses. A loss to SC coupled with wins over Vtech, UNC, and going through the AAC(whether right or wrong) will garner them the spot.

Marshall still has to take care of business and go undefeated. One loss and we are automatically out. There is no room for error.  Frankly, we also need to keep blowing people out. It is our only hope.

[goherd24]

No way a 2 loss ECU team gets in. None. A one loss ECU team very likely is in over Marshall with no losses. A loss to SC coupled with wins over Vtech, UNC, and going through the AAC(whether right or wrong) will garner them the spot.

Marshall still has to take care of business and go undefeated. One loss and we are automatically out. There is no room for error.  Frankly, we also need to keep blowing people out. It is our only hope.

The AAC is very weak. They currently have 4 or 5 teams in the bottom 10 in the nation. That is bad. Hrts them also that auCF is not playing very well and Houdton and sucks. Memphis has went down the tubes too. That conference is no stronger than cusa. The computers recognize that.

[banker]

It's strange, I don't remember ESPN doing "skits" making fun of NIU, who played and lost to a bad P5 school, when they made a BCS bowl. I also don't remember them them doing it to Hawaii. They made comments about the strength of their schedule but they didn't go so far as to bring in some doof to lampoon the school and what the football team was doing.

Maybe they aren't picking on a school from a conference they don't have rights to. Maybe this is just the next step toward becoming total crap as a network.

[goherd24]

It's strange, I don't remember ESPN doing "skits" making fun of NIU, who played and lost to a bad P5 school, when they made a BCS bowl. I also don't remember them them doing it to Hawaii. They made comments about the strength of their schedule but they didn't go so far as to bring in some doof to lampoon the school and what the football team was doing.

Maybe they aren't picking on a school from a conference they don't have rights to. Maybe this is just the next step toward becoming total crap as a network.

Agreed. They are a bunch of turds.

[herdgadfly]

My point about Bill Snyder and K-State runs along these same lines that Snyder was never faulted. Neither are the large FBS schools faulted for scheduling weak OOC opponents. But somehow Marshall is responsible for the raids on CUSA members to change to other conferences - thus we somehow weakened the conference.

Of course, as a Herd fan, I wonder why our athletic department was caught asleep at the wheel when CUSA could not entice Sunbelt teams like Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette to join our conference. And if the Sunbelt could snatch Georgia Southern from the ranks of the FCS, where was CUSA? What about the service academies that used to be a part of CUSA?

I am reminded of the fiasco that occurred in setting the location for our conference championship game. There were no CUSA rules that made any sense but Rice was treated favorably. We should have held out for a neutral site at least, but we had no clout - and that is the bottom line now.

And the beat goes on . . .

[goherd24]

My point about Bill Snyder and K-State runs along these same lines that Snyder was never faulted. Neither are the large FBS schools faulted for scheduling weak OOC opponents. But somehow Marshall is responsible for the raids on CUSA members to change to other conferences - thus we somehow weakened the conference.

Of course, as a Herd fan, I wonder why our athletic department was caught asleep at the wheel when CUSA could not entice Sunbelt teams like Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette to join our conference. And if the Sunbelt could snatch Georgia Southern from the ranks of the FCS, where was CUSA? What about the service academies that used to be a part of CUSA?

I am reminded of the fiasco that occurred in setting the location for our conference championship game. There were no CUSA rules that made any sense but Rice was treated favorably. We should have held out for a neutral site at least, but we had no clout - and that is the bottom line now.

And the beat goes on . . .

Do you have any type of actual information that we tried to get arkansas state or ULL and couldn't😧? Or, are you just beating the ole sky is falling drum and throwing out nonsense?

[_sturt_]

Dang.

Some of us can't take a joke very well.

Good thing some of us can, so we don't completely come off as hypersensitive and having no sense of humor.

When you're where we're at, I think there's almost no such thing as bad attention. ("Almost," setting aside something like having a roster full of criminals or something like that.)

It's all attention.

And the more we get, the more people are talking about us.

Worse to have no attention than attention you don't especially like.

Glass half-full, viewers/fans from the rest of the U.S. were reminded that we're the school that has produced some bona fide NFL talent, and were made to remember We Are Marshall... no doubt, compelling some number to think to themselves, "Yeah, Marshall... why not Marshall?... they're a legit program."

[goherd50]

Fact number one, even had Louisville remained on the schedule, we still had not one but TWO Mid-American schools plus an FCS... so the scheduling template, regardless, was already inferior to what almost ANY other FBS school had for 2014. We should own our decisions and not pretend otherwise.

Fact number two, we weren't any more advantaged or disadvantaged time-wise than any of the other left-behinds (UAB, USM, UTEP and Rice)... we all learned our fate simultaneously... and yet ALL of them had at least two contract OOC games lined up... so the whole "these schedules are set years in advance" as-if we had no time to adjust is just a CYA claim. We took a risk in getting into the routine of scheduling two MAC teams, and only one contract school... and it backfired. So, again... own our own decisions. Fans might be, but no one who is in any position of authority is fooled.

No one said we would have had a great strength of schedule if the Louisville game hadn't been moved.  The point was it would have been better than what we currently have.  How would the discussion have been different if (and that's a significant if) we went undefeated against this same schedule but had U of L instead of Rhode Island vs. ECU with its two wins over ACC schools?  Personally, I think in that instance we come out ahead.  The problem with the current schedule is that there are no - zero - nada games that nationally anyone would use to evaluate how good we might be.

Without looking I don't think anyone went out and changed there non-conference schedule as a result of the conference shifting.  Those teams already had two pay day games set up.  Had nothing to do with the defections from the conference. The point is that with the most recent changes we went from a second tier conference that most years had several teams that were competitive against bigger name schools and won a few most years.  The new conference that we are stuck with doesn't have a single team that anyone nationally would consider worthy of discussing, let alone think they are competitive.  The AD had no idea how much worse the conference would be when he scheduled those MAC games.

This year is a perfect storm of 1) the remnants of dumbing down the schedule to create a winning culture; 2) Louisville game being moved; 3) conference shifts that changed our conference schedule from mediocre to awful; and 4) being damn good.  If the AD had been able to predict four years ago that this would be the year for us to compete on the national stage he probably would have scheduled differently, but scheduling ahead like that is a crap shoot.  We scheduled over our heads when we thought the 1990's would continue through the 2000's.  Now we scheduled way too lean for how good we have become.  Looking at future schedules they aren't great from a national perspective, but are much, much better than this year's.

[HerdHead]

You don't get it............. and it's not about an official company line..... in almost 25 years there I never once saw or heard of what is in the Corporate best interest being taken into consideration by News and Opinion.... just doesn't happen, there is no influence........

So its not the Ford/Chevy situation..... It's not advertising, its News and Opinion....

I don't get it??  You're the one who mentioned "an official company position"... I just followed up on your thought. 

And I don't think we're discussing "news and opinion" as much as discussing espn's continual poo-pooing of C-USA... a conference it has no, or very little rights to... you might remember the lawsuit luvherd referenced earlier in this thread??  Remember that??  No hard feelings between the two entities, I'm sure.  In the immortal words of Dr. Evil:  "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!"

And it's not just Marshall football 2014... espn has been shutting out coverage of C-USA for a few years now... in all sports.  If a C-USA team makes the NCAA bkball tourney, it's barely mentioned.  I dunno when this all started.... maybe around the time espn failed to get the rights to C-USA.... or maybe around the time of the lawsuit???.... hmmmmm.... just a coincidence, I'm sure, dan.... 

Oh, well, we can just agree to disagree...

[bbcard1]

There's a lot of things that can be said about the schedule.

We were a victim of CUSA changing.  Honestly a lot of the name-ish schools that left are not a lot better than the schools that stayed, but the perception is that they are. MTSU could compete in the AAC this year not for the top but to be bowl eligible.  A lot of the mid-level teams here would be mid level teams there, but the perception took a big hit.  Only ECU, Cincy  and UCF are appreciable better this year from the AAC than the mid level CUSA teams...and that is not a compliment to either league.

We are kicking the %^&* out of everyone. That's what you are supposed to do when you play teams that are not as good as you are.

We killed Akron at their place. Akron is not a bad team as evidenced by their defeat of Pitt.  Pitt beat Virginia Tech which is one of ECU's marque wins.

Ohio, is a traditional rival and someone we play regularly. There is no shame in having OU on our schedule.

Which brings us down to Miami and Rhode Island as the teams we could be criticized for scheduling. Rhode Island was a last minute replacement, so that' really beyond reproach.

So Miami was scheduled to be our FCS type game, leading into Louisville, which is a traditional power.  Our scheduling had a logic to it and it just didn't work out.

[_sturt_]

No one said we would have had a great strength of schedule if the Louisville game hadn't been moved.  The point was it would have been better than what we currently have.  

No one suggested that we would have had a "great strength of schedule" if the Louisville game hadn't been moved. And no one said it wouldn't have been better than what we currently have.

The point was that this thread was begun in reaction to criticism about our schedule, and accordingly, my point is that, even had we kept Louisville, our schedule still would have been receiving criticism... so, pointing out that we lost Louisville doesn't really solve the criticism.

The problem with the current schedule is that there are no - zero - nada games that nationally anyone would use to evaluate how good we might be.

Agreed.

The AD had no idea how much worse the conference would be when he scheduled those MAC games.

Neither did the UTEP, Rice, USM or UAB athletic directors know how much worse it would be... but unlike us, their scheduling template nonetheless already had them working out 2 OOC games, not just 1, with higher-regarded (whether legitimately so, or not) contract conference opponents.

scheduling ahead like that is a crap shoot... Looking at future schedules they aren't great from a national perspective, but are much, much better than this year's.

And yet... the question remains open... if we end up being successful this year in getting the NY6 bowl bid, doesn't that provide evidence that goherd24 is correct that this kind of scheduling template is best?... shouldn't we prefer to do 3 MAC games plus an FCS every season?... isn't the proof in the pudding in that case?

[goherd50]

The point was that this thread was begun in reaction to criticism about our schedule, and accordingly, my point is that, even had we kept Louisville, our schedule still would have been receiving criticism... so, pointing out that we lost Louisville doesn't really solve the criticism.
It would still be criticized, but not nearly as badly.  How much different would the conversation about us vs. ECU be?

Neither did the UTEP, Rice, USM or UAB athletic directors know how much worse it would be... but unlike us, their scheduling template nonetheless already had them working out 2 OOC games, not just 1, with higher-regarded (whether legitimately so, or not) contract conference opponents.

I am not sure how relevant it is to discuss the scheduling adventures of our conference mates that have four or five losses.

And yet... the question remains open... if we end up being successful this year in getting the NY6 bowl bid, doesn't that provide evidence that goherd24 is correct that this kind of scheduling template is best?... shouldn't we prefer to do 3 MAC games plus an FCS every season?... isn't the proof in the pudding in that case?

No because the decision isn't always between an undefeated MU and a one loss ECU.

[svherd]

When our league goes with a competitor network what do you expect ESPN to do? They will push for their clients and feel inclined to project them in a good light. It's business. CUSA SCREWED UP in choosing CSTV. We went for the fast nickel.

If anything we should be pissed at Fox1 for not mentioning us more in their telecasts. They aren't helping our cause at all. Yeah, they give us the pleasure of being streamed on the internet. That's not exposure, not close.  We should be their lead story or one of them on their college football shows and discussions. Instead I hear crickets.

Our anger is misguided in my mind. Jmo

[MUsince96]

FS1 would be smart to develop a tagline that pushes their commitment to straight sports news reporting and objectivity IMO. Sort of how Fox News developed the "Fair & Balanced" tagline.

It would be a way to call out ESPN without actually calling them out, and attract viewers who just want sports news without the spin, force fed narratives, and sensationalism that comes along with watching ESPN.

[goherd50]

... in fact they built a wall between News and Opinion and the Live Event (game production/Entertainment) sides just for this kind of thing.  ESPN hires several Journalism professors and former Newpaper Editors and an Omsbudsman who are all insulated from Marketing and Corporate just to insure that the Corporate interest NEVER is allowed to infiltrate the News and Opinion side.

First, let me say that I respect and appreciate the information that you provide.  Having said that, I stopped considering ESPN to be a "news" organization a long time ago.  To me it is nothing but a hype machine for big money sports in general and  Disney sports programing in particular.

If it were truly a news organization it wouldn't tell me that Marshall's schedule is bad, hell, I can figure that out for myself.  It would be nice if one of these football geniuses would actually watch Marshall play and give a little analysis of what they see.  i.e.  good QB but don't think he would be as affective against top secondaries; dline is underweight and would get pushed around by top 15 programs; cornerback is a player - Sunday potential, but overall secondary might not be able to play as much man coverage against better receivers; RB is a beast, wouldn't get as many long runs against defenses with more team speed. I would respect a here is were I think they stack up in comparison to top 25 type of discussion regardless of whether I agreed with there conclusions.  The assumption that the team is bad because the schedule is bad is very weak in my opinion.

[MUsince96]

Here's a great insiders article from a few years ago on how ESPN ditched journalism.

http://deadspin.com/5929361/how-espn-ditched-journalism-and-followed-skip-bayless-to-the-bottom-a-tim-tebow-story

---Patrick asked Gottlieb if ESPN reports news or creates it, and Gottlieb said, correctly, "both." Patrick summed up the tension between ESPN's news wing and its entertainment division quite well:
 They've lost that credibility, a large portion of the credibility of covering news. I think that it's now: ‘What's trending?' Focus groups. You're trying to create things there. Bernie Fine story at Syracuse. Where's that? The New Orleans story with the Saints with Mickey Loomis? Where's that? Where are those stories? Those are big stories that you guys created. You were late on the Joe Paterno story. I think there's just a different mindset from what they're doing and how they're covering it. And they always fall back on ‘Well, Bob Ley covers the serious news stories.' SportsCenter should be covering sports, they should be covering the news. I think they created it with Tebow. And ESPN embarrassed themselves in spending a week out there at Jets camp.

[_sturt_]

I am not sure how relevant it is to discuss the scheduling adventures of our conference mates that have four or five losses.

Here's the relevance, assuming one is asserting that the AD is to be excused from having scheduled as he did DUE TO not knowing what was going to happen...

No one else knew, either.

And in particular, no one else among the schools that are our CUSA left-behind peers did (ie, since they're the ones who have shared the exact same history in this expansion merry-go-round as we did).

And yet, none of them ended up with a schedule worthy of the same criticism as ours has experienced.

[_sturt_]

Ahhh... the blurring of the lines between "news" and "commentary."

Seems familiar even beyond the sports arena.

[HerdHead]

When our league goes with a competitor network what do you expect ESPN to do? They will push for their clients and feel inclined to project them in a good light. It's business. CUSA SCREWED UP in choosing CSTV. We went for the fast nickel.

If anything we should be pissed at Fox1 for not mentioning us more in their telecasts. They aren't helping our cause at all. Yeah, they give us the pleasure of being streamed on the internet. That's not exposure, not close.  We should be their lead story or one of them on their college football shows and discussions. Instead I hear crickets.

Our anger is misguided in my mind. Jmo

I wholeheartedly agree with you sv.  My beef is with the person who is denying the obvious and subsequently defending his position. 

[BHFIOHIO]

Four straight Tuesday games is a good one we avoided not to mention the 800 grand a yr diff that ESPN paid Akron vs CBS or whoever paid Marshall(CUSA) ESPN hasn't gotten under my skin because I don't read their BS even on here. We made our choice and I'm happy with it. Just win baby! Don't mind the schedule either. I like being undefeated.

[herd2win]

I like dshoe but he is blinded on this one...ESPN is always demeaning MU or not showing highlights or ignoring us...we beat Maryland and killed ECU, only trailed for about a minute all season and are winning games by 30...give this team props...ECU has beaten cap teams....ESPN clearly has bias...