In an attempt to relieve the college basketball overload that swamps most sports fans this time of year, I'm going to talk about something else - and don't worry, I'll avoid the tired topics of Barry Bonds, Jim Tressel and the NFL draft as well. With the Final Four finished and spring games occurring around the country, college football is on my mind. ESPN has fed my craving by broadcasting the spring games of 12 different college football powerhouses this year. You probably can guess which schools they feature - Auburn, Oregon, Stanford, Virginia, LSU, Alabama.
That's right, you read that correctly. Virginia's annual Orange-Blue contest kicked off ESPN's 2011 college football spring game schedule. And like most other Wahoos, I was just as confused as I was excited, especially since Virginia has to be the only football program to surrender 55 points in a loss to Duke and still have its spring game broadcast by ESPN the following season. For those neophytes of Virginia football fanhood, it may seem like ages since the Cavaliers have been relevant in college football, but the glory days are not that far behind us. Between 1989 and 2007, Virginia made a bowl game in all but four seasons - '92, '97, '01, and '06 - with the most recent bowl appearance coming four seasons ago at the 2007 Gator Bowl. So what will it take for Mike London to bring the Cavaliers out of the doldrums of college football mediocrity? I don't claim to be anything close to an college athletic director, but let me take a stab at solving the Wahoo's woes.
Winners want to play with winners. That is a fundamental law of sports. It's why LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami. It's why top high school basketball recruit Austin Rivers committed to Duke. And it's why the top college football dynasties seemingly always snag the top recruiting classes in the country. Although great facilities, academics and location may be important pull factors for high school players, winning football games is undoubtedly the bottom line in London's ability to attract top talent to Charlottesville. So how do you win in college football?
In the ACC, every team plays eight conference games and four non-conference games, with the latter opponents chosen by the school. Of the non-conference games, one FCS team such as William & Mary can count toward the six victories needed for an FBS team such as Virginia to become bowl-eligible - but any additional victories against FCS squads are not counted for bowl berth purposes. So to avoid a discussion about the athletic department's boneheaded decision to schedule two FCS teams last year, my recommendation as hypothetical athletic director would be to schedule a very bad FCS team as Virginia's first opponent to give the Cavaliers a good warm-up game, some momentum and a countable victory toward bowl eligibility. Assuming that the 2009 debacle against the Tribe does not happen again, that's one win down, five to go.
The next three wins should be almost as simple as the first one. Of the 120 teams that make up the FBS, there undoubtedly are at least three bottom feeders that Virginia can beat - Akron, Memphis, New Mexico, Western Kentucky, Eastern Michigan... the list goes on and on. But the point is the four non-conference games determined by the athletic department should be chosen wisely to ensure more wins. Opponents of my proposed creampuff non-conference schedule counter that those easy wins cost money, acknowledging the common practice of college football powerhouses paying sizeable sums to small schools in exchange for the right to slaughter their hopelessly overmatched opponents. But Virginia ranks among the top 15 schools with an athletic department net surplus of $3.4 million. Not only does Virginia have money to spend, but the money generated by the ticket sales, bowl game revenue and memorabilia sales stemming from a winning program easily will surpass that of the money spent to create the winning football team in the first place.
Even with an undefeated nonconference record, Virginia still would need two conference wins to become bowl-eligible. But in the ACC - a conference precious few pundits would call a college football heavyweight - two wins in eight games should not be too hard. Each year, there are teams having "down years" - take Virginia since 2007, for instance - or others who simply don't play to the best of their ability and open the door for an upset opportunity. Either way, two conference wins annually is attainable for even the worst teams in the conference. If that doesn't inspire the Cavaliers to greatness, I don't know what will.
So there you have it - I just put Virginia football in a bowl game. A 6-6 record means the Little Caesar's Bowl probably would be Virginia's postseason ceiling, but at least it's something upon which to build. A bowl game means more revenue, more exposure, more recruits and, most importantly, another game to win. The next year, with improvement across the program, that .500 football record easily could improve to 7-5, and so on. Of course, this simplified version of the process is a far cry from the incredibly difficult path being paved by Littlepage and London. But if Virginia football wants to get where it needs to be, it needs to stop scheduling two FCS schools in the same season - VMI and Richmond in 2010 - beat teams they're supposed to beat - William & Mary in 2009 - and not schedule games against teams which already have their programs where we want to be - Penn State and TCU in 2012. Then hopefully in a couple of years, when I hear teams such as Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Arkansas mentioned in the same breath as Virginia, I won't even think twice about it.
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