Backyard Brawl, regional games key for West Virginia future schedules
Regionality is important when it comes to scheduling, which makes the future of the Backyard Brawl a topic that remains at the forefront of many fans minds when it comes to West Virginia.
The rivalry matchup with Pittsburgh is currently scheduled in football for 2024 and 2025 before taking a four-year break and resuming from 2029-32. While in basketball, the series would need to be renewed.
The good news is that there is a desire to do just that as Athletic Director Wren Baker fully expects that to occur based on the conversations he has had with Pittsburgh Athletic Director Heather Lyke.
“The spirit is there. You’ve all heard the coaches say they want to extend it. We just have to find a little time to actually sit down and hammer out the details for that,” Baker said.
Due to the ongoing academic year and the challenges that presents, the pair have been distracted so there hasn’t been any contractual movement on continuing the series, but Baker has every reason to believe that it indeed will get done at some point in the future.
When it comes to scheduling you often have to meet in the middle.
That was the case with the Big 12 Conference when it came to their scheduling grid for the next four seasons spanning the 2004-27 campaigns according to Baker.
Related: West Virginia has willingness to continue Backyard Brawl
Some of the new schools added to the conference wanted everybody to play everybody over that four-year period, while Baker and some others preferred a more regionalized version where the Mountaineers would be able to play a team like Cincinnati all four-years.
The end result was a hybrid approach where there is certainly a regional component as the Mountaineers will play both Cincinnati and UCF, the only other teams in the Eastern time zone, three out of the four years. That is the maximum number that the schedule allowed without a game being designated as an annual protected rivalry game as was the case for a few matchups.
The Mountaineers also got a break with the scheduling in the sense that they will only travel to the far western reaches of the league twice in one year in 2025 when the program will head to BYU and Arizona State. But West Virginia also has been having conversations in order to help with the difficulty of that.
That is a season where there will be two bye weeks and West Virginia is trying to build around it.
“We’re having conversations in making sure we split those two trips up enough one; so that they’re not close to each other and two; that the bye is next to one of them,” Baker said.
Even in the realm of the super conferences, finding a way to make it work regionally remains key.
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