I posted this in another thread buried somewhere but I wanted to share my latest hare-brained scheme and let others poke holes in it.
[My most recent hair-brained scheme involved trying to get rid of some raccoons hanging around and invading my front porch at night; my scheme was such a flop that I now have even more raccoons hanging around my front porch at night. I have found that raccoons are very smart and only look like bandits; in reality, they are major felons when it comes to thievery.]
Is it time to rethink SEC regular season scheduling?
We started with 13 teams and 8 hosts in the NCAAT.
All but 6 have already been eliminated, and 4 more could do down today.
Potentially, only Auburn and Arkansas could be left.
(UNC likely wins over OK who is now thin on pitching. Although OM and LSU “should” win over their #4 seed opponents; UTjr has a much tougher task; although OM and LSU have already lost to those teams they “should” have beat when they had better starting pitchers available, so who knows. It’s been a crazy post-season already.)
Did the 10 week grind against other SEC teams do us in, collectively, this year?
Perhaps we should reduce that to 7 weeks, alternating weekends on/off until the end of the season where everybody plays their 2 permanent opponents the last 2 weekends (like Vandy has the last 2 seasons.)
21 total games is still a sufficient number to separate the wheat from the chafe (MO) and we have very detailed tie-breaking procedures to set the SECT brackets (which don’t really matter anyway; it’s just the luck of they draw anyway.
Weekends 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 are on.
Weekends 2, 4, 6, 8 are off.
On off weekends play other mid-major teams who are pretty good, but not great, just like the teams you’ll face in a NCAAT regional.
Oregon State is now an Independent and might be interested in some top-notch series instead of the fluffballs they now play most weekends. But, that’d just like playing another SEC teams so maybe not.
Of course, most mid-majors are playing their own conference games during all those weekends but surely not everyone does and might jump at the chance to show what they can do against the almighty SEC.
Just looking at Vandy, how about weekend series with Austin Peay, ETSU, Belmont, Lipscomb instead of Arkansas, LSU, Texas, and Georgia. Instead of 2 home/2 away series we could have 4 home series, and that’s a winner for ticket holders IMHO. (Thank God we stopped playing at the Sounds stadium. I only saw it as being robbed of 2 home games without a reduction in season ticket prices and thus boycotted all of those games. My boycott apparently got their attention.)
This approach also gives SEC coaches a good chance to “play around with” their weekend rotation without messing up the next weekend’s rotation. Give your #1 guy a weekend off occasionally to better preserve him for the post-season; test out your better freshmen pitchers in that regard instead of having to wait like we did to throw Nye against two SEC teams for his first big-time starts.
Same is true for the fielding positions; lots of “try things out” along the way instead of having to do that the first month of the season. Gives players like Maldo new opportunities to get things right.
Sometimes, just like my cat, one has to think outside the box about how to get into the box (but not The Box) via the best approach for the long-term good.
[My most recent hair-brained scheme involved trying to get rid of some raccoons hanging around and invading my front porch at night; my scheme was such a flop that I now have even more raccoons hanging around my front porch at night. I have found that raccoons are very smart and only look like bandits; in reality, they are major felons when it comes to thievery.]
Is it time to rethink SEC regular season scheduling?
We started with 13 teams and 8 hosts in the NCAAT.
All but 6 have already been eliminated, and 4 more could do down today.
Potentially, only Auburn and Arkansas could be left.
(UNC likely wins over OK who is now thin on pitching. Although OM and LSU “should” win over their #4 seed opponents; UTjr has a much tougher task; although OM and LSU have already lost to those teams they “should” have beat when they had better starting pitchers available, so who knows. It’s been a crazy post-season already.)
Did the 10 week grind against other SEC teams do us in, collectively, this year?
Perhaps we should reduce that to 7 weeks, alternating weekends on/off until the end of the season where everybody plays their 2 permanent opponents the last 2 weekends (like Vandy has the last 2 seasons.)
21 total games is still a sufficient number to separate the wheat from the chafe (MO) and we have very detailed tie-breaking procedures to set the SECT brackets (which don’t really matter anyway; it’s just the luck of they draw anyway.
Weekends 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 are on.
Weekends 2, 4, 6, 8 are off.
On off weekends play other mid-major teams who are pretty good, but not great, just like the teams you’ll face in a NCAAT regional.
Oregon State is now an Independent and might be interested in some top-notch series instead of the fluffballs they now play most weekends. But, that’d just like playing another SEC teams so maybe not.
Of course, most mid-majors are playing their own conference games during all those weekends but surely not everyone does and might jump at the chance to show what they can do against the almighty SEC.
Just looking at Vandy, how about weekend series with Austin Peay, ETSU, Belmont, Lipscomb instead of Arkansas, LSU, Texas, and Georgia. Instead of 2 home/2 away series we could have 4 home series, and that’s a winner for ticket holders IMHO. (Thank God we stopped playing at the Sounds stadium. I only saw it as being robbed of 2 home games without a reduction in season ticket prices and thus boycotted all of those games. My boycott apparently got their attention.)
This approach also gives SEC coaches a good chance to “play around with” their weekend rotation without messing up the next weekend’s rotation. Give your #1 guy a weekend off occasionally to better preserve him for the post-season; test out your better freshmen pitchers in that regard instead of having to wait like we did to throw Nye against two SEC teams for his first big-time starts.
Same is true for the fielding positions; lots of “try things out” along the way instead of having to do that the first month of the season. Gives players like Maldo new opportunities to get things right.
Sometimes, just like my cat, one has to think outside the box about how to get into the box (but not The Box) via the best approach for the long-term good.
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