West Virginia looks toward scheduling options
The West Virginia football program finds itself in a unique spot given their conference affiliation when it comes to non-conference scheduling.
The Mountaineers have tried to secure as many regional rivalries as possible over the past couple years with a home-and-home with Virginia Tech, Penn State, the conclusion of the Maryland series and four-games with Backyard Brawl rival Pittsburgh that will extend until 2025. That series with the Panthers is then set to start up again for another four-game stretch from 2029-2032.
It’s certainly a plus for the fan base given the proximity of those games and how until this past season the football program didn’t play a game within 800-miles within the Big 12 Conference. The additions of Cincinnati and Central Florida to the league at least give the program another team within their own time zone but the desire to fill the non-conference schedule with regional teams is certainly there.
Athletic Director Wren Baker has already made it clear that future scheduling models will likely feature on regional rival, preferably Pittsburgh, a regional group of five team and then an FCS program.
That would help to avoid the situation that the program has found itself in over the past three years opening up on the road against a power five rival. The Mountaineers lost all three of those games and haven’t hosted seven total home games since the 2016 season.
Now, that’s not to say it’s all bad. The national attention that West Virginia has gotten for opening the past two years especially on the road at Pittsburgh in a featured ESPN Thursday night contest and this past year as the NBC primetime selection gave the program massive exposure.
No, West Virginia didn’t win either game, but a lot of eyeballs were on the program.
However, head coach Neal Brown doesn’t have an issue with playing against a power five regional opponent although he would prefer not to open up on the road yet again.
“We’ve opened up on the road three years in a row which is not smart scheduling,” he said.
Brown isn’t wrong. Combine that with the fact that the Mountaineers are one of only a handful of teams to play at least 11 power five opponents each of the past three years and the program isn’t scheduling like the majority of their peers within their own league or across the country.
Now, that isn’t some reason to explain the overall results as Brown has gone just 22-26 atop the program in his five seasons in Morgantown but the Mountaineers have no incentive to continue to make things more difficult in the future when it comes to building those models.
The schedule is the schedule this year, last year and the year before – those can’t be changed. Those were made when different considerations were at the forefront and the exclusivity of getting into the College Football Playoff had teams overscheduling to ensure they wouldn’t be left out.
But that has been proven not to be nearly the factor that it once was believed to be.
And there is no reason why the football program shouldn’t continue to schedule at least one, if not two in some years, regional games that appease the fan base at large. There is no denying their importance and one look at the sellout of the Backyard Brawl this year shines all the light on that you need.
It just doesn’t need to be an annual occurrence given the expansion of the College Football Playoff but there is a happy balance for West Virginia in terms of scheduling regardless who’s atop the program.
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