Fresno's schedule a risky venture
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
At first glance, it looks like a Western Athletic Conference football coach's version of a suicide note:
Non-conference games with Colorado, Oregon State, Wisconsin and Colorado State, all of them probable preseason Top 25 teams and all but one of them on the road.
But nobody held an assault rifle to the head of Fresno State coach Pat Hill to get him to sign on the dotted line.
The games have been Hill's ideas. Even when three of the games were already booked and organizers of the Jim Thorpe Classic proposed the Aug. 25 meeting with Colorado in Boulder, Colo., Hill jumped at the chance. "Bring 'em on," being his operative phrase.
We bring this up because in all the controversy over the University of Hawai'i and Fresno State switching the date and time of their game to accommodate ESPN on Oct. 26, one of the most significant experiments in WAC football is being overlooked. Which is: Can a WAC team play its way into the Bowl Championship Series with a quality schedule?
"It is probably the kind of schedule it will take to elevate a WAC team into contention for the top six," said Karl Benson, WAC commissioner.
Heretofore it has been an article of faith that WAC teams can't crack the BCS because, even in the rare year that one of them has a Top 10-caliber record, they'd have built it upon a less than imposing schedule.
Witness last year when Texas Christian, which had dropped Nebraska from its schedule, won its first seven games. Or, 1996 when Brigham Young went 12-1 and was consigned to the Cotton Bowl.
As a result of the BYU snub and the threat of lawsuits and legislation, any WAC team that finishes in the top six automatically earns one of the eight good-as-gold spots in the BCS. It is the difference between an $11 million-$13 million per team payout and the $750,000-$3 million at non-BCS bowls.
A difficult non-conference schedule is also a bold statement to be sure. The kind only a man secure in his contract status, and confident in both his and his team's abilities — or out of his mind — would dare undertake. Still, it is a long shot even for a coach surrounded by 16 of 24 returning starters.
With a lot of luck, maybe the Bulldogs can even pull it off. But if the schedule takes its toll and injuries mount, the Bulldogs could limp in here.
By the time the Bulldogs leave here, nine games through a 13-game schedule, we'll have a pretty good idea how this most daring experiment is going to play out.
