I'm not convinced the scheduling won't be used strategically

MidtownJacket

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I have been thinking about this a lot the last few weeks and am becoming more and more convinced that teams will try to game the system to optimize their chances to win a title this year by strategically ducking games as needed to get guys healthy.


This article gives a look at how loose and fast the conference is going to be with regards to scheduling and I don't know what would stop a team from doing shady things to get an edge. I am not suggesting people will manufacture test results, but it seems there is discretion for how they're doing isolation off of contact tracing and other practice time reductions related to this.

I do now think teams are incentivized to help themselves. For example I would say "Heck no" to playing this following week (we need the non-covid guys to get back healthy, but if we were full strength would think we would jump at the chance to play another game while we were healthy before flu season picks up.

Just another example of the new breed of non-football related lucky bounces this season will hold.
 
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I have been thinking about this a lot the last few weeks and am becoming more and more convinced that teams will try to game the system to optimize their chances to win a title this year by strategically ducking games as needed to get guys healthy.


This article gives a look at how loose and fast the conference is going to be with regards to scheduling and I don't know what would stop a team from doing shady things to get an edge. I am not suggesting people will manufacture test results, but it seems there is discretion for how they're doing isolation off of contact tracing and other practice time reductions related to this.

I do now think teams are incentivized to help themselves. For example I would say "Heck no" to playing this following week (we need the non-covid guys to get back healthy, but if we were full strength would think we would jump at the chance to play another game while we were healthy before flu season picks up.

Just another example of the new breed of non-football related lucky bounces this season will hold.

So I would guess that Notre Dame asked us to play on the open as their next scheduled game is 10/10. Also they would have to play @Pitt, then Us, then Clemson all in a row. I am guessing that they wanted to avoid that.
 

YJMD

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I'm sure there are a ton of scenarios to try and make up missed games, and I'm sure if a team is in such a position they are going to try and push for whatever helps them the most in the W-L column. I think it would be very dangerous for any team to try and abuse the rules in a way that put anyone at risk of exposure. If they get caught, the liability could be huge.
 

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I hope we told ND we’re down 1/3rd of our starters and we’re still playing games, so they can go pound some green catholic sand and we’ll see them later down the road.

(I don’t even know what green Catholic sand is, so my apologies to anybody that may take offense to that strand attempt at a joke.)
 

MidtownJacket

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I'm sure there are a ton of scenarios to try and make up missed games, and I'm sure if a team is in such a position they are going to try and push for whatever helps them the most in the W-L column. I think it would be very dangerous for any team to try and abuse the rules in a way that put anyone at risk of exposure. If they get caught, the liability could be huge.
I don't mean to suggest they would intentionally infect anyone, more that we could see people use the specter of Covid to avoid playing if they are injured in key positions. Or, as I mentioned above, teams who have to reschedule a game because their opponent has infections getting hosed because they lose an open weekend to make up for it. It is just going to be an interesting layer of complication for how the proverbial ball bounces.
 

RonJohn

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So I would guess that Notre Dame asked us to play on the open as their next scheduled game is 10/10. Also they would have to play @Pitt, then Us, then Clemson all in a row. I am guessing that they wanted to avoid that.

If ND plays at GT next week and Syracuse and Wake play next week, that would open up 10/31 for ND and Wake to make up their game.

Since the WF-Campbell game has been moved to 10/2, it would have given WF-ND a chance to make that game up on 10/10 if FSU moved their game with ND up to 10/3. Instead, it looks like WF-ND will be played on 12/12.

I think it shows how difficult it is to schedule and to modify schedules on the fly.
 

Techster

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ACC: "Hey GT, want to do us a solid and shuffle your schedule and play on bye week instead?"

GT: "Hey ACC, remember all those times you gave teams a bye week before playing our teams under CPJ, and scheduled us on Thursdays when we said not to?"

ACC: "Why you gotta bring up the past...we all gotta work together to get this this Covid crises..."
 

Deleted member 2897

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ACC: "Hey GT, want to do us a solid and shuffle your schedule and play on bye week instead?"

GT: "Hey ACC, remember all those times you gave teams a bye week before playing our teams under CPJ, and scheduled us on Thursdays when we said not to?"

ACC: "Why you gotta bring up the past...we all gotta work together to get this this Covid crises..."

****ing fabulous post. I still have scars from those years (multiple times), where THREE ACC teams had bye weeks before us in a single year.
 

MidtownJacket

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ACC: "Hey GT, want to do us a solid and shuffle your schedule and play on bye week instead?"

GT: "Hey ACC, remember all those times you gave teams a bye week before playing our teams under CPJ, and scheduled us on Thursdays when we said not to?"

ACC: "Why you gotta bring up the past...we all gotta work together to get this this Covid crises..."
AMENDED TO ADD:
GT: Also, tell the NC schools to pound sand. They got the easy road, we aren't making our's any harder.
 

ChicagobasedJacket

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I am glad Stansbury held firm on keeping our bye week in place. Not our fault other programs are down players. No need to put our guys at risk either. Loved the post about the ACC having repeatedly screwed us too.
 
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