[QUOTE=Mike Johnson][If you accept the above facts as evidence, then Coach Solich's scheduling philosophy holds merit. Of the other 5 schools shown, only 1 - Miami - has played more BCS teams than has Ohio since Solich's arrival. Only 1 of those 5 - Toledo - had higher average 2010 attendance than Ohio and that by a margin that could be called statistically insignificant.
And Ohio? Of the 6 schools, it has won more than any of the rest and its 2010 attendance ranked just a tad below Toledo's - rather remarkable when considering Ohio's remote location and tiny local fan base versus Toledo's.
In the above facts, I see no evidence that scheduling more BCS teams will lead to more victories and higher attendance. Miami's record during that period suggests that booking more BCS teams leads to more losses and lower attendance.
Were I occupying Coach Solich's office, I'd likely be thinking: "We're winning more games, recruiting better talent, competing for more titles and earning more bowl invitations. It seems the scheduling formula we're using is pretty sound."[/QUOTE]
You are assuming quite a bit here that isn't given. For starters, you are assuming that all fan bases react to BCS games the same way. Perhaps Ohio fans value BCS home games more than other MAC programs? Given that I believe our three highest attended home games in history all were against BCS opponents, this is certainly plausible.
Second, it's unclear what impact the prevalence of BCS games had on each of those school's attendance. For instance, maybe Miami's attendance would have been even lower if they hadn't been hosting BCS programs during that time.
Third, your data just accounts for record vs. BCS games generally, and not the number of BCS home games that each program had.
So the data presented here alone really doesn't justify the current scheduling strategy in my mind.
As you know, Flomo, virtually every analysis requires making certain assumptions. A key is how solidly grounded are those assumptions. To me the above analysis seems built on rather solidly grounded assumptions.
For example, you cite "BCS games generally, and not the number of BCS home games."
My assumption: in football the home advantage is small. Each year, year after year, Jeff Sagarin calculates that the home advantage in football ranges between 3 and 4 points. Certainly that can matter in close games but most often isn't the determining factor. Look at Ohio's recent experience. Under Solich didn't the Cats win 7 or 8 straight conference road games? While losing some at home? And beginning with the Grobe years, Ohio's performance against bigger time teams seemed pretty consistent at home and away. On the road there were victories over Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Kentucky and Illinois. At home over Pitt. Meanwhile home losses were to East Carolina, Iowa State, Minnesota and UConn. The home losses to East Carolina and Iowa State were painfully close - as were road losses at KSU and NC State.
As far as Ohio's home attendance versus those teams, a few observations.
* East Carolina. Disappointing crowd. Under 20,000 as I recall.
* Iowa State. Crowd swelled by the fact it was the dedication game for the renovated Peden and fans still were holding out hope coming off Grobe's final season and opening close road losses at Akron and WVA.
* Minnesota. Flat out disappointing crowd. (We've seen larger crowds for MAC games, Wofford and others.)
* UConn. Great crowd.
Pending further analysis by you and others with differing conclusions, I'll stand by my above analysis and my supposition that Coach Solich sees merit in his scheduling approach as it benefits Ohio's program.