Originally Posted by
BrunswickDawg
There really aren't. I count 25 potential non-P3 schools within about 5-6 hours of Starkville - USM, Memphis, Jacksonville St., UAB, Jackson St., Alcorn, Valley, Grambling, Ala A&M, Al State, Southern, Troy, Murray, UNA, West GA, Austin Peay, Kennesaw, Samford, GA State, Tulane, UNO, Nicholls, La Tech, La-LA, SEMO. Kicking SWAC takes that to 19. We typically play 24 OOC games. With 2 Gov Cup games, 1 Biloxi game, 3 games in a neutral site weekend in TX, and 1 road game headed east for an SEC game, that leaves 17 home dates to fill. There is no way fill 17 home dates with a pool of only 19 schools within 5-6 hours of Starkville. Even throwing in "pass thru" teams travelling across the area on their way to a conference foe it's hard to do.
Just look at Feb 17/18 when we played Troy and Alcorn. Assume other teams that played in our general area those 2 days were our primary pool of teams to draw from for the schedule.
Samford and Alabama St @ Bama; Jackson St and Arkansas St @ OM; and SE Louisiana @ USM. Choosing out of that group, eliminate Samford (we played later), Jackson St. (we play later), and Troy (2nd time). That leaves Alabama St (SWAC) #234, SE Louisiana (Southland) #85, Arkansas St. (SunBelt) #37. So maybe we could have pulled SE or Ark St instead? Maybe not.
If you look at March 17/18 when we played Jackson St., options are even less. Other area games were Nichols #106 @ USM, Austin Peay #143 @ OM; and Bama @ USA #80. We already had AP and USA on the schedule, leaving Nichols as the only other choice - whom we played last season when they were #198.
When you start dialing in on available teams and dates, you start to see how tough it can be creating the schedule.
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