The Boise St. Broncos have been trying to schedule a 13th game since they travel to Hawaii, but they have had no luck in getting a decent home game. Boise State athletic director Mark Coyle talks about the difficulties in finding a 13th opponent:
"You want to build a schedule that's competitive and helps you achieve your goals. ... Your goal is to have an opportunity to compete in postseason play. With scheduling, we want to be smart, we want to be strategic. ... What I'm learning here, it's hard to convince people to come out and play here. I'd like to get some of those programs to come out here and play here. Boise State has done an incredible job of being flexible and going out and playing other people, but we want to have conversations and develop those series where we're going to have people come here."
Coyle talks about a series which refers to Boise State's long standing policy of wanting to play a home-and-home series and not playing a one time game or a two-for-one. The problem in scheduling for Boise State is that they play at the level of the top teams in the country with a pair of BCS games, but for brand name teams to play at Boise State is unfortunately not the best situation.
It is a lose-lose situation since Boise State plays in the Mountain West where a school from a BCS league is expected to win regardless of where Boise State is ranked, and if they win they are supposed to win. Also, there is no benefit for BCS teams to schedule a tough out of conference opponent, because a loss to even a good Boise State team might drop them out of contention for a BCS or national title game.
The only time those schools go on the road is to face the likes of Texas, USC, Oregon or Ohio State like teams which Boise State is obviously not one of those teams and it is not really fair. Plus all the big name teams want are as many home games as possible.
Michael Felder makes a good point on this topic as it all comes down to money:
Even with their meteoric rise in the last six seasons, the fact remains that they are not like the elite programs. From here the argument can go a couple different ways-lazy rhetoric about teams being scared or the actual reality of college football, money.
This development is a lot less about teams being "scared" to play Boise State and a lot more about the economics of college football. Teams want home games. Home games are where your school makes their own money. Game days are the big money-makers, and ideally every school works to maximize the amount of home games in an effort to maximize their money.
I agree with most of that, but I still do think teams are a little afraid to play on the road against teams like Boise State. However, I get it that high-level BCS teams would rather have seven or eight home games to make as much money as possible instead of traveling to a small 40,000 seat stadium in a game they could lose.
Getting back to money, Boise State does not have a ton of cash to just buy a FCS team to come in and buy a win, and if Boise State is to have a shot at a BCS game this year they can not afford to have a low strength of schedule by playing a FCS team. However, with Boise State losing so many key players in Kellen Moore, Doug Martin and others means making a BCS bowl game quite difficult, so trying to schedule a high quality team may not have been the best idea in 2012.
So it looks like Boise State will be stuck with only 12 games this year
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