The Hugo Bowl:
The Hugo Bowl:
It’s a cupcake game.
The P5 teams have brutal conference schedules, every week on the highest level of competition. It’s high risk for loss of game and players.
These low-intensity games pose a tune-up scrimmage for the large schools, plus the smaller school gets $500,000 as compensation for the beating.
11 a.m. AST track had the storm passing directly over Gainesville Saturday afternoon.
And Florida is on their own 30 yard line.
No wait, where do everyone go?
Last football game I was at was Georgia vs Louisiana ... right after Hurricane Katrina. Half the LA team was homeless at that point. The trouncing was embarrassing.
The money means a lot to a small program. Plus the players actually like it because it gives them a chance to play in front of a large crowd. And occasionally, the small program team actually wins the game.
I don't get it. If you're going to charter a flight, why fly into Tampa instead of Gainesville?
The less successful programs need to play (and lose) to Power 5 conference schools to kept their football team solvent.
When I was in Mississippi, a lot of folks laughed at Southern Miss’s “anyone, anywhere, anytime” motto regarding football scheduling. True, the Golden Eagles would take on anyone, but it was a fiscal necessity. In-state rivals Ole Miss and Mississippi State stopped scheduling them years ago, and Southern never had much luck in attracting crowds for their home games. In fact, the only time I remember them filling their 35,000 stadium is when Nebraska agreed to a home-and-home with them, and they had to bring in portable bleachers to accommodate the overflow crowd.
Florida and UNC made the right decision. A better question is why Florida Atlantic is going ahead with a road game at Wisconsin this weekend. FAU is another program that benefits from the payday that comes from being a home win for a Power Five school, but you’ve got to believe the team and coaches are more concerned about what’s going on back home.
There’s also the question of how the team will get back after the game. All the major airports in Florida (with possible exception of Pensacola) will be closed beginning tomorrow and they may not re-open for days. So, you assume the team’s charter will land in P-Cola, Mobile, or somewhere in Georgia. After that comes the bus ride from hell; travelling south through the hardest-hit areas will be a hard slog, at best, and there’s no guarantee they can reach the campus, even early next week.
I know the Badgers want a home win they believe will be fairly easy, but they should have done FAU a favor and cancelled or postponed the game. A lot of the Florida Atlantic players will be distracted (for obvious reasons) and that increases the chances of injury.