Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 | 12:03 p.m.
Steve Guiremand covers college football for the Sun. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-2324.
There's an old coaching axiom that you never schedule yourself out of a job.
That came to mind this week when I read the comments of Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick.
Now Lubick doesn't need to worry about getting fired in Fort Collins, where he's a legend and even has the field at Hughes Stadium named after him. But with his Rams off to an 0-3 start for the first time during his 12-year tenure thanks in part to a very difficult nonconference schedule that included blowout losses against No. 1 USC (49-0) and No. 19 Minnesota (34-16), Lubick took the blame for putting his team in a very difficult predicament.
It was Lubick who gave the OK in the spring to add the defending co-national champion Trojans to a schedule that already featured a road game to in-state rival Colorado in Boulder and a home game against Big Ten power Minnesota.
"It was an experiment, and I learned from it," Lubick said. "The USC thing, especially, was on me. I liked the idea of going in there and playing a school like that in a great atmosphere. But with CU the week before and Minnesota the week after, that just doesn't give a team a chance.
"This was a major formula for failure all the way. CU is a great rivalry, and that's a team we're going to play every year that we know if going to be good and talented and athletic. But after CU, we have to be smarter. Our conference is tough enough, and sometimes we forget who we are. Let's play schedules like we're supposed to play."
Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson, who is trying to get his conference recognized as being more competitive than the Big East or Conference USA so it can have better access to the BCS, has said he believes playing three BCS teams is overly ambitious in nonconference. He believes MWC teams should play schools from two BCS leagues in non-conference play and mix in a I-AA or non-BCS league opponent.
Thompson's reasoning is that strength of schedule will play a key element in the future format of the BCS.
"All you can do is play good people, and obviously at some point you have to beat good people," Thompson said.
But Lubick said he thinks Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, notorious for scheduling three or four nonconference creampuffs to help build confidence for Big 12 Conference action, might have the right idea.
"We don't want to go back to the future like we did 20 years ago and play teams we have no business playing," Lubick told the Denver Post. "The program has been too good, too solid. It was an experiment. I know I learned from it. I think Bill Snyder has the right idea."
As for Thompson's scheduling formula, Lubick said: "Craig Thompson has his ideas. We have ours. We have to do what's best for our school and our football program. ... You build a program like we did over a 10-year period and give yourself a chance to win seven or eight games."
Colorado State hosts I-AA Montana State on Saturday to try to get back on the winning track before playing host to BYU to open conference play next week. The Rams were originally supposed to play at MAC power Miami of Ohio this week but alertly switched to a home game against the Big Sky Conference champs when they added USC to their schedule.
Crowton just may have been scheduled out of a job with a nonconference slate that started with Notre Dame and ends with tonight's game at two-time WAC champ Boise State, which rarely losses on its blue Smurf Turf. The Broncos also currently own the nation's longest winning streak at 14.
In between were games at Stanford and against No. 1 USC. You'd think after that brutal schedule that the folks at the Mountain West Conference, who don't release their conference schedule until the spring until after TV dictates which games it wants, would have given the Cougars a bye ... or at least a home game. Instead, BYU must travel to Fort Collins next week for a key contest against Lubick's Rams.
UNLV, which even moved its opener at Tennessee back a day so it could bring the conference national TV exposure, followed that up with another long trip to Wisconsin a few days later. Their reward was not a much-needed bye last week but an early conference game against Air Force, arguably the toughest team in the MWC to get ready for in a week.
And Long's Lobos (1-2), who played Washington State, Texas Tech, Oregon State and this week travel to in-state rival New Mexico State, also don't get a break before starting conference play. Instead, they play host to defending conference champ Utah next Friday night, which gives them one fewer day to prepare.
Major conferences such as the Pac-10 release their league schedules years in advance, which allows their teams to work around key conference games and to avoid nasty scheduling stretches. And until the Mountain West becomes powerful and popular enough to do that, I'm with Lubick.
Once around the MWC
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