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Rutgers, Indiana and Kansas have successfully reconditioned their once-powerless football programs during the time Arizona has been undergoing repairs.
The Scarlet Knights, who did not appear in a bowl game from 1978 to 2004, have a waiting list of more than 12,000 people on their season tickets list and are planning a $102 million expansion of Rutgers Stadium.
The Hoosiers, bowl-less from 1993 to 2006, have built locker rooms, an indoor practice facility, press box suites and will spend $55 million to enclose Memorial Stadium and add 5,000 seats.
After nine straight losing seasons, the Jayhawks, 12-1 last year, have a new football plant, the $31 million Anderson Family Complex, connected to once-listless Memorial Stadium.
The unexpected rise of those three traditionally futile football programs has more in common than spending lavishly on facilities and coaches: They all watered down their nonconference schedules.
As a result, three of the sorriest programs of the last quarter-century have abandoned the game's "final four'' — Arizona, Duke, Baylor and Vanderbilt, the four lonely BCS schools that haven't played in a bowl game dating to 1998 or earlier.
Is it that simple to regenerate a BCS football program?
Spend a lot of money. Build a lot of cool things. Dump Top 25 teams from the schedule.
Why, yes. Perhaps it is.
In the mid-90s, after a run of five bowl appearances in six years, former Arizona Wildcats coach Dick Tomey told me the Wildcats were actually losing ground.
"Nothing is going to change here until we start losing regularly,'' he said. "That's the surest way to get a new weight room and a new locker room.''
As if on cue, Tomey was asked to resign and Arizona continued to lose. Suddenly, the school built a marvelous strength and conditioning center and remodeled most of the football facilities, including the practice fields and game-day quarters at Arizona Stadium. Payroll for assistant coaches has almost doubled.
Those nonconference teams that Tomey regularly battled — three against Ohio State, two against Miami, two against Oklahoma and others against Penn State and Georgia Tech — have been replaced by The Citadel, Toledo and Idaho.
The next step in Arizona's return to football health is to build a shiny new football center in the north end of Arizona Stadium — details are likely to come next month — which is apt to trigger an overdue expansion/facelift of the old stadium.
Instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses at Oregon and USC, the Wildcats seem poised to play in a bowl game for the first time since 1998 because they are following the Rutgers-Kansas-Indiana model.
It almost makes you laugh.
As Rutgers started over under coach Greg Schiano in 2001, the Scarlet Knights eliminated Notre Dame, Texas, Virginia Tech and Cal from the preconference schedule and regularly scheduled Temple, Buffalo, Army, Navy and Villanova.
It bought them time (and victories and confidence) as Schiano suffered 2-9, 1-11, 5-7 and 4-7 seasons. Now suitably upright, Rutgers' schedule is more bold. It will play Fresno State, North Carolina, Navy, Army and Morgan State this year.
That's a scheduling theory that has served Kansas, which has probably played the weakest BCS nonconference schedule the last four years. The Jayhawks have scheduled so many easy victories (Florida International twice, Sam Houston State, Central Michigan, Louisiana-Monroe, et. al.) that by the time the Big 12 season begins KU is often 3-0 and halfway to bowl eligibility.
Arizona will try that approach with its Idaho-Toledo-New Mexico opening routine.
Indiana and Arizona have a lot in common. Both are perceived as basketball schools that performed well in the '80s and early '90s under old-school coaches such as Bill Mallory and Tomey.
After firing Mallory, Indiana jettisoned its next two coaches, Cam Cameron and Gerry DiNardo, after eight consecutive losing seasons. It hired Terry Hoeppner, who died from complications of a brain tumor a year ago, but his assistant, Bill Lynch, took charge and guided the Hoosiers to seven victories and the Insight Bowl.
Here's how it happened: Indiana beat Akron, Ball State, Indiana State and Western Michigan in nonconference games. That's 4-0. In the 21st century of college football, the Hoosiers were then required to do the minimum: win three of eight Big Ten games in a season in which Ohio State wasn't on the schedule. And that's exactly what they did, beating Iowa, Minnesota and Purdue. Lynch was viewed as a conquering hero.
Like golf, college football is not a game of "how,'' but one of "how many.'' By beating Toledo and Idaho enough, a team's chances of expanding its stadium, redoing its reputation and keeping its customers satisfied soar.
After all these years, the Wildcats seem to have figured out how to win again.
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