Weak schedule weak ranking
By KURT ROSENBERG
This Saturday, a few minutes before 1 p.m., the Univer
sity of North Carolina football team will come out of
Kenan Fieldhouse, sprint across the field and take its place
along the sideline as the Marching Tar Heels (the Band of
Champions), cheerleaders and 50,000 fans go berserk.
Across the field will be standing Rex Dockery and his
Memphis State Tigers, a team that has won four of its last
33 games. Saturday will make four of 34. And the Kenan
Stadium crowd will roar and get drunk and love every min
ute of it.
And next week it will be the same thing all over again,
and the week after that, too. On Sept. 17, UNC hosts
Miami of Ohio, the team the Tar Heels beat 49-7 two years
ago, the same team that crushed powers like Northwestern,
Eastern Michigan and Kent State in 1982. After that farce
comes William & Mary, which gave up 332 points last sea
son and hasn't beaten North Carolina in 1 1 tries. Make it
12.
North Carolina will complete its non-conference schedule
with a perfect record of 4-0 and outside of the state of North
Carolina no one" will care. No one in Lincoln, Neb. will care
because the Cornhuskers have already destroyed Penn State
and have teams like UCLA and Oklahoma to contend with.
In Austin, Tex., nobody will care, either; on the Longhonis
schedule are Auburn, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Southern
Methodist. Nor will they care in Notre Dame, Ind., because
the Fighting Irish have to play Miami (Fla.), Southern Cal
ifornia, Pittsburgh and Penn State.
You might ask the question, "Who cares that nobody
cares?" In Nebraska and Texas and Indiana, it may not be
important what people think of the North Carolina Tar
Heels or the kind of schedule they play. But things like that
matter also to the writers across the country who select
weekly for the Associated Press the nation's top 20 teams
and to the coaches who do the same for United Press Inter
national. And that is important.
The writers and coaches will see UNC's 4-0 record, which
should change to 5-0, 6-0, then 7-0 after games against
Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and N.C. State... and they
won't care either. Maybe they'll start to care a little bit
more if the Tar Heels are able to beat Maryland and Clem
son, the only games they should have difficulty winning, in
the eight and ninth weeks of the season. But we're getting
ahead of ourselves.
To determine who was responsible for the creation of this
year's schedule, it's necessary to go back in time to the year
that William Fuller was a first or second-grader. The blame
generally goes to Bill Dooley, the North Carolina coach
from 1967-77. Dooley, who has probably been pestered
about the issue countless times, gets angry when he's asked
about it and says he had nothing to do with it.
"I did not have any input in scheduling at the University
of North Carolina," he says bluntly.
More likely, it was a group of athletic directors CP.
Erickson, Walter Rabb and Homer Rice who were
primarily responsible for making the 1983 schedule, as well
as the schedules for the past few years and the next few
years.
But looking for a scapegoat serves no purpose, and even
less of one when the scapegoat isn't around anymore.
North Carolina will play Memphis State and Miami of Ohio
and William & Mary and nothing can be done about it. And
the criticism will continue and it will bother Dick Crum and
his players.
"The thing is, a lot of people are criticizing things they
really don't know anything about. They just talk from the
outside," strong safety Willie Harris says. "I just get tired
of hearing it."
When this schedule was put together, it probably didn't
look anywhere near as bad as it does now. UNC had some
mediocre seasons in the late 1960's and early 70's; no one
had even heard of Dick Crum then and there was no way of
knowing what kinds of teams North Carolina would be put
ting on the field in the 80's. Just like athletic director John
Swofford has no idea how good the Tar Heels will be in
1999. But he's already working on the schedule for that
year.
"It's kind of foolish," Nebraska athletic director Bob
Devaney says. "Your team might change in stature a whole
lot if your schedule is made too far in advance. You might
be playing teams that are weaker than you thought they'd
be, or you might be playing teams that have become too
tough for you to beat."
Seemingly, the entire concept of long range scheduling
makes no sense. But it makes money, and making money is
generally a helluva lot more important than making sense.
The formula is simple: the bigger the game, the larger the
crowd; the larger the crowd, the more money goes to each
school. It is important to play strong teams for the sake of
prestige and for the sake of the rankings, but money is at
least as important it keeps the school's football program
going. Hence, the constant race for the best possible sched
ules for as many years as possible.
"When we go in to play Oklahoma, we're playing to a
sellout house," Southern California athletic director Dr.
Richard Perry says. "We're going to bring home a $450,000
check."
And even more if the game is televised.
Next season, North Carolina's non-conference schedule
consists of Navy, Boston College, Kansas and again, Mem
phis State. Not that much tougher than this year. Florida
State will play UNC in 1985 and '86, Oklahoma and Au
burn in '87 and '88, Pittsburgh in '91 and '92.
It's a long time to wait. Advocating shorter term sched
uling is the obvious thing to do, but it's probably a waste of
time. How to make the most money dictates policy, and
just as the UNC schedule can't be changed, it isn't likely
that the policy by which it was made can be changed, either.
So North Carolina's football team will suffer from a lack
of respect. Unless, of course the Tar Heels go undefeated,
which is unlikely.
Says Perry: "If your schedule reflects teams not in the
top 20 and you end up losing one or two ball games, the
pollsters would be hard-pressed to take you very seriously."
The Memphis State Tigers will leave Chapel Hill late
Saturday afternoon, and will prepare for the rest of the
season, which includes games against Virginia Tech, Ala
bama, Southern Mississippi and Vanderbilt. Before Dick
Crum and Rex Dockery shake hands and wish each other
luck, they might be wise to trade their 1983 schedules.
Kurt Rosenberg, a junior journalism and sociology ma
jor from Stony Brook, N. Y., is an assistant sports editor of
The Daily Tar Heel.
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