LSU AD Alleva Has A Problem

BigdaddyQH · May 22, 2015

It seems as if LSU AD Joe Alleva has a problem, or at least he thinks he has a problem. He is crying about the lack of teams that are not willing to travel to Baton Rouge to play LSU. "Teams don't want to come to Tiger Stadium and get their butts beat. That's just a fact of life. I'm being as blunt as I can be ... they don't want to schedule losses." said Alleva. A rather bold statement from a guy who canceled a home and home series against N.C. State and has been crying for years to get Vandy or Kentucky to replace Florida as one of their crossover rivals.

What he should be worrying about is the fact that LSU has become rather irrelevant in the past 3 years, climaxing with a 5 loss season last year that included two home losses and a bowl loss. The talk seems to be about the two Alabama teams, along with A&M and Mississippi. LSU is almost an after thought.

CoachCB · May 22, 2015

He has a problem because he's right?

TyBounce · May 22, 2015

I think he's got it backwards , its not teams that fear baton rouge , it's network politics that keep upper eschelon sec teams from playing road non con games.

I had hoped that with cbs going away this might get better , but it actually looks like its going to get worse.

The top tier sec teams will either play neutral site games on week 1 or end of season games like fla/fsu , ga/ga tech , s.c/clem that they know will be on espn/abc/sec. .... but you're not going to see alabama , auburn , or georgia playing ucla on fox , or playing mich st on the big-10 network.

Bottom line , (for upper eschelon sec teams) it will either be on espn/abc or it aint gonna happen.

BigdaddyQH · May 23, 2015

We know that the SEC has been cowering away from home and home series for quite a long time, but TV is not the major reason. If a SEC powerhouse agreed to play a Pac 10 powerhouse, ABC/ESPN would televise BOTH games. The fact is that the SEC has the mistaken belief that they are 10 times better and tougher than any other conference. As was proven in the last two seasons, nothing could be further from the truth. I can argue that the Pac 12 is a better overall conference than the SEC, and a SEC fan can argue the opposite and neither of us would be wrong. The real truth is that the top 3 teams in the PAC 12 (Oregon, UCLA, and USC) are 8-1 against the SEC since 2000. Another truth is that in many southern states the SEC is the only thing going. They are NOT California and only one SEC team resides in Florida. In other words, most residence do NOT have a life to speak of other than football.

TyBounce · May 23, 2015

BigdaddyQH said:
We know that the SEC has been cowering away from home and home series for quite a long time, but TV is not the major reason. If a SEC powerhouse agreed to play a Pac 10 powerhouse, ABC/ESPN would televise BOTH games. The fact is that the SEC has the mistaken belief that they are 10 times better and tougher than any other conference. As was proven in the last two seasons, nothing could be further from the truth. I can argue that the Pac 12 is a better overall conference than the SEC, and a SEC fan can argue the opposite and neither of us would be wrong. The real truth is that the top 3 teams in the PAC 12 (Oregon, UCLA, and USC) are 8-1 against the SEC since 2000. Another truth is that in many southern states the SEC is the only thing going. They are NOT California and only one SEC team resides in Florida. In other words, most residence do NOT have a life to speak of other than football.

I dont have any documentation to prove it , but i guarantee you that the last 2 h&h series that bama canceled was b/c of cbs not b/c they were too cowardice to go to Tallahassee. ...CBS couldn't stand it that abc could show the game in a competeing time slot. Thats a fact. It was CBS.

lIKE I said earlier , i had hoped that the network politics would diminish with cbs going away , but unfortunately the sec network has put the sec even further in bed with espn/abc , and you won't see a top sec team play a road game that goes to a different network. PERIOD !

CoachCB · May 23, 2015

Yeah, Florida has coward away from that FSU series.......

groundhog11 · May 25, 2015

You always hear how lsu is mad about the crossover part of football schedule...

RunLeeRun · May 27, 2015

Another factor is the amount of money these teams are asking. Nebraska is paying Arkansas St 1.6 million for a future game. I like an idea the Big Ten is kicking around about playing conference foes as part of the non-conference schedule. This would be great to beef up the schedule with a power-5 team and keep the money in the family. A great example for Nebraska would be getting Michigan on the schedule once during the 4 year lapse where you miss out on playing them. I think it'd be good for some of the cross-over scheduling games that get skipped over in the SEC. As I recall, with the designated cross-over games, there are some pretty long lapses of teams missing each other, right?

edit: As the article points out, the ACC is doing this (wake and unc) for '19 and '21.

groundhog11 · May 28, 2015

RunLeeRun said:
Another factor is the amount of money these teams are asking. Nebraska is paying Arkansas St 1.6 million for a future game. I like an idea the Big Ten is kicking around about playing conference foes as part of the non-conference schedule. This would be great to beef up the schedule with a power-5 team and keep the money in the family. A great example for Nebraska would be getting Michigan on the schedule once during the 4 year lapse where you miss out on playing them. I think it'd be good for some of the cross-over scheduling games that get skipped over in the SEC. As I recall, with the designated cross-over games, there are some pretty long lapses of teams missing each other, right?

edit: As the article points out, the ACC is doing this (wake and unc) for '19 and '21.

totally agree...I hate these ooc cupcake games...