UPDATE: So the App State blog linked below responded to my reasons saying it “They all boil down to – “App State might win.” Wow, I wish I had thought of that I could have saved myself the time I spent actually typing the ones I did.
I am not sure how you get that from reason #3, maybe they care to explain.
Reason #2 has a hint of that but in terms of this present season and how scheduling is done, there is no way UNC or any other BCS school would schedule a team like App State, with all of the local pressures, for their fourth non-conference game when there are three tough non-conference games on the schedule already. It just doesn’t happen and that is more about the rest of the schedule than it is App State.
Reason #1 is the only one that hints strongly at the “App State might win” logic but that feeds into the larger fact that UNC gains nothing from playing them. UNC does not get extra points for beating the three time defending I-AA champs and stands to lose a great deal should they lose. App State on the other hand benefits either way so when it came down to it, as it pertains to 2008, scheduling App State was not going to happen. As I said in the original post, App State beating Michigan made them radiocative to a majority of I-A teams the same way Davison is in basketball along with other mid-majors. The difference here is even greater than Davidson because there is an actual division between the level UNC plays at and the one App State has ruled for three years. Losing to a I-AA school is nothing short of humiliating regardless of how good that team is which is odd because in many ways App State gets respected and disrespected all at the same time.
Also, tarryheel at 850 pointed out that UNC’s final slot was for the first week of the season and App State already had LSU on the schedule so count the lack of a mutually open date as another reason why it did not happen.
Original post after the jump.
That seems to be what App State fans think following the revelation from Moutaineer coach Jerry Moore that an attempt has been made to schedule a ASU-UNC game and so far the Heels have not been interested.
I tend to look at it as showing proper respect but there are two good reasons and one random one I think of for this decision:
1. UNC has nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing ASU. Beating Michigan basically turned ASU into a radioactive isotope that not many folks on the I-A level are willing to touch. That is because ASU would be a tough opponent and winning over them would take a great game. The problem is win nothing more an a I-AA win. Sorry but there are much easier ways to get them(i.e. McNeese State) and losing to ASU would bring a boatload of trouble we could do without.
2. UNC had three fairly tough out of conference teams on the schedule already for this season so adding a fourth in ASU would have been a bit ambitious. UConn and Rutgers are in the upper level of the Big East and I will be shocked if Notre Dame does not improve upon their record from last season plus they are still Notre Dame. With those three already set and UNC needing another non-ACC opponent they opted to schedule a team like McNeese State versus somehow at or near the top of I-AA. It seems perfectly logical to fill that final slot with a home game that you should win.
3. Probably not relevant but these two teams have not played in 68 years. UNC simply does not look to schedule ASU and it has been like that even when the Heels were a top ten program during the 1990s.
So, if ASU fans want to carry on about how UNC is scared to play them, feel free to do so if it makes you feel better. As it turns out the UNC schedule already had it’s quota of tough games and playing ASU would deprive the young Heels of their cupcake snack.
And a word of advice to App fans. You might want to spend less time whining about UNC not playing you and worrying about that season opener versus LSU because if there is two things I know for sure it is Baton Rouge ain’t Ann Arbor and SEC speed does kill.
Hat tip: 850 the Buzz
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Maybe they want to schedule a little roundball with us instead?
Yeah, that could be the first shutout in basketball since probably 1922.
We have basically two sets of fans from smaller schools in NC who, due to some recent successes, strut around like they own the place: App State in football and Davidson in basketball.
As much as I would like to root for these schools, the behavior of some of their fans makes it almost impossible.
isn’t McNeese State a top-tier I-AA program? Or am I completely making this up? i believe that they are always in the playoffs come the postseason.
Maybe they’d like us to add them to the schedule in, say, two years, when our D has played together for 3-4 years, our offensive line is a bit more stout and TJ has developed a better rapport with the WRs and RBs.
“As much as I would like to root for these schools, the behavior of some of their fans makes it almost impossible.”
Now you know why it’s hard to ever root for UNC in anything.
THF: Approved but keep it civil
Why?
Just to liven things up a little and hoping someone would point out the fallacy in his argument that people hate UNC because of the fans which could not be further from the truth. UNC is a winning athletics program and that engenders hatred more than anything else. Every fan base has obnoxious fans and you can find enough of those in any fan base to dislike the team. In the case of App and Davidson, the exuberance over your team is not undeserved but in the case of Davidson basketball fans, please stop acting like you own the place because you clearly do not.
All teams have some fans that can be jerks, especially highly successful ones like Carolina.
Last March in the RBC Centre (NCAA tourney), UNC fans were pulling for Davidson almost as much as they were pulling against Georgetown. When Davidson’s players emerged from their locker room sometime during a time-out during UNC’s rout of Arkansas, Davidson pretty much got a standing from the crowd. And they deserved it.
While Matt Dorehty was coaching and Buzz Peterson was at ASU. UNC was the Home opener for Appalachian’s Current Basketball arena in 2000. As far as football scheduling McNeese St entered the 2007 postseason as a #2 seed in the FCS Tournament while ASU was a #3 Seed. Looking at the payout that ASU is receiving from Michigan, LSU, Florida, Va Tech, and Georgia I doubt UNC would want to pony up the money and risk a loss.
Living here in Asheville, I hear it from Appy fans all the time. Things are certainly going very well in Boone and they deserve a lot of credit for their achievements. But, football is all about match-ups and the fact is Mich was slow at the corners on defense and App does have real speed at the skill positions albiet a little small. LSU will have more speed and size. If they win that game then I’ll be very impressed. And, they lost several games in their own conference and got in the play-offs as a “wild-card”. App’s longest traditional rival has been Western Carolina (who has been awful for 10 years). Their fans will tell you that they dislike the App fans every bit as much as we dislike Dook and see a lot of similarities. All I can say is Geux Tigers!
I wouldn’t exactly call McNeese State a cupcake. They were 11-0 in the regular season last year (including a 38-17 win over Louisiana-Lafayette, a FBS team) and were seeded second in the FCS playoffs before falling on their faces against Eastern Washington in the first round. Still, a team that had an 11-1 record last year and has a lot of key players returning (7 on offense, 5 on defense, plus a guy who was their conference player of the year in 06 before being hurt all of last year) is nothing to sneeze at; they’re not Appalachian State, but they’re no slouch either.
As for Appy, UNC won’t play them for the same reason that UNC would never have played ECU again had the state legislature not gotten involved. There is nothing to gain from playing a local program that competes on a lower tier — if you win, big deal, but if you lose, you elevate the profile of their program at the expense of your own: they will start taking recruits and fans away from you, right in your backyard. This is why if you must play a competitive lower-tier team, you should play one located somewhere outside your recruiting center and fanbase — Lake Charles, LA, for example.
So I just peeked at the App. State blog, and now I feel dumber for having done it. The blog post itself didn’t bother me — yeah, it was inflammatory and full of straw men, but that’s really par for the course for most fan blogs (keep staying above that level, THF!); but man, oh man, the comments… I’d have thought that fans of the three-time defending FCS national champions would be more informed about college football in general, but there was a guy who insisted adamantly that “the NC legislature doesn’t decide who plays who in football” (hate to break it to ya, but it does — the legislature is the only reason UNC and NCSU ended up playing ECU) and also made references to UNC having nothing to gain from playing “even lowly Samfor [sic]” — despite the fact that UNC has never considered playing Samford, and the only thing linking Carolina to Samford is a parody photoshop DONE BY THAT VERY APP. STATE BLOG.
I also love the line about how UNC does is “get attention due to a coaching change in his 2nd year who recruits players that cannot qualify academically to enter Clemson”; I assume that’s a shot about Dwight Jones (no one else comes close to fitting that description), and I’d note that 1) UNC had been recruiting Dwight Jones for at least as long as Clemson had, and probably longer and 2) Dwight Jones didn’t qualify academically for Carolina, either — he’s going to end up suiting up for neither school, which is a terrific blow to the assumption that we take other schools’ academic rejects, eh?
Consider my mind boggled from all the immaturity and ignorance I just read over there. That’s what I get for assuming other blogs have intelligent discourse.
Thank you for braving that, your service to the THF community is duly noted.
Speaking of other fans who hate UNC, the Daily Tar Heel ran a story a few weeks ago about how NC State students look at UNC, and vice-versa. The story took a somewhat generous approach overall.
The blog comments about the story were almost totally from State students, almost all of whom described UNC students as vain, egotistical and country clubbish in attitude. I was astounded that college-trained young people could be so stereotypical in their views of an institution of more than 25,000.
I couldn’t help but add my comment that when I was attending UNC in the late ’60s, my favorite cousin and my best friend from high school were both attending State. We got along just fine, I said in my comments, and would even get together on weekends back home and do stuff together. Yeah, we liked to jab one another about our respective schools, but it was never hateful, the very attitude I saw in those blog entries.
I just hope it was an indication that only those students with a grudge bothered to respond to the article.
The problem is the most vocal and visible members of the fan base are usually the ones who are the most extreme in their views. Because this is what people see and because it has the “wreck on the interstate” quality to it, that is generally held up as indicative of the fan base as a whole. Same is true of political parties as well.
The primary undercurrent to the editorial decisions made on this blog have to do with representing Tar Heel fans as being reasonable and intellectually honest. Based on the readership and how you all comport yourself in the comments area I’d say it is working fairly well.
“So, if ASU fans want to carry on about how UNC is scared to play them, feel free to do so if it makes you feel better. As it turns out the UNC schedule already had it’s quota of tough games and playing ASU would deprive the young Heels of their cupcake snack”
Isn’t Duke the cupcake snack? I think ACC teams should be required to schedule hard non-conference games simply because Duke is a sure win. Weren’t they 11-1? Although, if memory serves me correctly, UNC had to go to OT to beat Duke.
“And a word of advice to App fans. You might want to spend less time whining about UNC not playing you and worrying about that season opener versus LSU because if there is two things I know for sure it is Baton Rouge ain’t Ann Arbor and SEC speed does kill.”
Agreed. The last time we matched up against LSU, they pretty much destroyed us.
Asheville heel, ASU only lost 2 games last year, and to be fair, to worthy opponents. ASU entered the playoffs as a “Wild Card” not because we weren’t good enough to go to the playoffs, but because we were tied for first with a team who defeated us. I could be wrong, but it sounds like you could be a western fan in disguise.
Larry P,
“The blog comments about the story were almost totally from State students, almost all of whom described UNC students as vain, egotistical and country clubbish in attitude. I was astounded that college-trained young people could be so stereotypical in their views of an institution of more than 25,000.”
I have several friends from UNC who don’t fit this description; however, I’ve found that the “vain, egotistical, and country clubbish in attitude” Tarheels, however few (or many, for all I know), are the face of the institution because they are the most extreme. To deny that would be like denying that students at ASU are seen as pot-smoking hippies or mountain hicks (and we definitely have our fair share of both). It astonishes me when people from across the state assume I’m some kind of peace-crazed drug-addict or a character from Deliverance when they find out I attend Appalachian.
As for Tar Heel Fan and Johnathan Starsmore, I know you would like to think that UNC fans are far too intellectual and well-mannered to make inflammatory, immature, and ignorant, but that isn’t always the case, even on this particular blog. “Thank you for braving that, your service to the THF community is duly noted” for instance. I do have to say though, that the comments on this blog are at least more interesting than most.
“I know you would like to think that UNC fans are far too intellectual and well-mannered to make inflammatory, immature, and ignorant, but that isn’t always the case, even on this particular blog.”
Actually, I would not characterize even the jabs taken out of rivals found in the comments section to be necessarily “inflammatory, immature and ignorant” I know anything officially posted here does not fit that description unless you consider breaking out Danny Green’s dunk over Paulus every two weeks inflammatory. In my opinion I have a lot of issues I would like to discuss on this blog, attacking our rivals simply is not high on my list.
I am well aware of the ignorance that pervades every fan base out there and yes the most visible/vocal wings of the fan base often define it. That is who you end up various generalizations about any given school. This blog tends to be more focused and less inclined to follow the extreme end of the fan base but rather hold the reasonable middle ground. In fact this blog was created and is driven largely on my desire to provide an alternative to the message boards were discussions are centered on reality and folks do not feverishly jump off the bridge if the Heels lose one game.
In short I commend my readers for doing an excellent job in acting like adults and being moderate in their comments. I would like to think the tone of the comments reflect the tone of the content I produce and hopefully that will continue to be the case.
Granted every opinion expressed here is not going to be correct and I also do not expect folks to always be on the same page but I do expect things to be civil and the attacks on our rivals to be carried out in a clean, fun but also grounded sort of way.