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Featured Fanpost: An In-Depth Look at Four Decades of Husky Football Non-Conference Schedules (Nerds Welcome!)

Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

After having 20 minutes of work evaporate from the comments section regarding this topic (anyone say rookie move?), its "First Fanpost Fun-Time." I really started this to gain a better understanding of the issue just for my own personal knowledge, but 12 hours later…let’s just say this has become a bit longer than initially intended. If you have 15 minutes and are curious, give it a try.

Surprise, for some reason you’re reading this! And just for Howling…

So. The glory days of non-conference scheduling. Remember when we beat Miami, Texas A&M, Nebraska? Why don’t we schedule those teams anymore? Who are these cupcakes? That’s why UW can’t sell out games. What. Is. Jen. Cohen. Thinking?

This is the attitude I’m getting from quite a few on the Pound (even that Jen Cohen part from a few, somehow). I do happen to share the viewpoint that the current non-conference slate is simply unacceptable. I also happen to have a taste for irony. It was not long ago (after the 2008 season especially) that fans were all clamoring for a more win-friendly schedule. Why do we have to play the toughest schedule in the country every damn year? Well, wish granted. Not this year.

To be honest, I don’t have a great recollection of the 80s and 90s non-conference schedules (or how well the games were attended). Has Washington’s scheduling really fallen as far as we think? Or is it just perception? Is the schedule actually keeping Husky fans from Montlake? Will JoJo finally make up her mind and and just tell Luke he’s the one? Time for some good old-fashioned amateur investigatory journalism. Let’s take a quick peak at major* teams Washington played in the 80’s and 90’s. And listen to Tequila on repeat! WARNING: The 2000s will also be included in here. Fun related factoid: I threw up in my mouth a little while compiling the 2000s info.

*Major in this case meaning a team that year-in, year-out would be considered a high-quality opponent by the casual fan at the time. Illinois might have been awesome that time we played them that one year, but nobody cares. Ohio State could have been 3-9, but it’s still Ohio State. If we’re claiming that name recognition of opponents is a part of our attendance woes, then the opponent must be someone with enough brand recognition to make or break Karen and Kyle the Casual Fans’ decision to actually attend the game.

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*Purdue was not a good team during the time, but they do fit the profile of "major" opponent in my opinion, even if they were in their infancy of fitting that description. They were regularly bowl eligible in the late 70s and early 80s, but not again until the late 1990s.

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*Purdue was not a great team during the time, but they do fit the profile of "major" opponent in my opinion, even if they were in their infancy of fitting that description. They were regularly bowl eligible in the late 70s and early 80s, but not again until the late 1990s.

Well then, some of that was fun. Tequila! Some things to keep in mind.

1987 is when Husky Stadium went from 58,000 to over 70,000 in capacity.

I wasn’t born until the mid 80s, so some corrections on the perception of opponents before the early 90s may be in order.

All statistics are Wikipedia-based, so take them with a grain of salt.

Last, and most importantly, I’ve probably made a few errors. Or a lot. What constitutes "a few?"

And now a tidbit for the future. If you discount Purdue (as some of you older folks may), Washington fans saw no major OOC opponents at home 6 out of 9 years between 1980 and 1988.

It had to happen. At least 2000 was a fun year… Table 3 :(

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Now it feels more like too much Tequila. Zing.

Some interesting things I discovered while making these poorly structured tables:

  • I forgot that Washington used to have non-conference games scheduled late in the season against lesser quality opponents.
  • 1989 to 2001 saw an incredible non-conference schedule that must have been one of the most difficult during that time span. Let us not forget what Colorado used to be.
  • Depending on your views on Purdue at the time, Washington played at least one major non-conference opponent every year from 1983 (or 1989) until 2013 (yeah, I know, that 2010 table hasn’t been listed yet, sue me).
  • We saw no major OOC opponents on Montlake 4 out of 5 years in the mid-2000s. Remember it was 6 out of 9 in the 80s.
  • 2004-2008 really really really really sucked. Trust me, I was there. I graduated in 2009. It sucked.

Now, to the fan attendance in non-conference games. What did we discover? Until 2004, the attendance numbers between major OOC opponents and the lesser quality squads were, while not identical, shockingly close. Utah State, San Jose State, even the Idahos and Pacifics of the world, all regularly drew 70,000+ crowds. Indiana, Wyoming, the list goes on and on. Look at some of those attendance numbers for lesser opponents.

2004 is really where the line in the sand appears to be drawn. Husky Football 2004: thanks, Obama. It’s at this point that we see attendance averages for the non-conference slate fall below 70,000 for the first time since 1994 (San Jose State was the only home OOC opponent that year, and nearly 69,500 still thought it was worth their time).

2005 brings us the first 10,000-fan difference between the Major Opponent numbers and the fluff. 2006 brings us 54,000 in average attendance for the OOC season. Less fun fact: 2006 featured the same non-conference opponents as we saw in 2004. Just two years later, 11,000 less fans. Yuck. 2007 and 2008 saw attendance numbers increase due to the incredible amount "getting-our-ass-handed-to-us-by-real-men" top talent that came into Montlake. I wonder if those were Husky fans or Oklahoma and Notre Dame fans making the difference? 2009 illustrates the 10k gap once more.

And now the final (and of course very incomplete) table…


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*Wisconsin backed out of the 2017 and 2021 home and home series.

Here we sit.

The new norm. We now regularly see a 10k difference in fan support. I still have to wonder if its just the opponents' fanbases?

The next obvious issue: all the red. 2011-2017 offers only Boise State in 2013 for major OOC opponent home games (the opening of New Husky Stadium, what a blast that was). Six out of seven years with no major OOC game at home. Not fun, but we’ve seen similar-ish streaks before. Shockingly, though, Boise State is the only major opponent scheduled anywhere between 2013 and 2017. Three out of five years with nobody, and the other two are against Boise State. Hmmm. While we have noted streaks like this at home, a non-conference schedule that is overall this lackluster appears to be something new.

Now, had Wisconsin not backed out of their commitment (like the dirty backing-out badgers they are), I think we would say that the schedule was heading back in the right direction. This would have just been one of the lulls like we saw in the early 1980s. Wisconsin in 2017. Then BYU. Michigan. Wisconsin and Michigan in 2021? Anyone have any issues? But unfortunately, Wisconsin didn’t pan out, and that version of the schedule is not the reality we are faced with.

And that oh-so-delicious bile taste is coming back. Now don’t forget, Washington has had a few bowl wins over this period, some over notable teams. But in the regular season, from 2002 to the present day, UW faced 18 top teams in the non-conference schedule.18! Man, we must have created at least a couple college classics. Do you remember the "Knockout in Nebraska" or the "Neutering of Notre Dame"? No? Neither do I. Because, as we are all painfully aware, they didn’t happen. Of those 18 games we mentioned, we won only two. Both against Boise State. Now, some of the losses were close. A BYU celebration penalty and an overtime game against Notre Dame both pop into my head. But many of these games were not close… or even competitive (I sat through a lot of these, including the entire 55-14 Oklahoma game, and it was much worse than the score would lead you to believe).

Conclusions I draw from all of this data (draw your own if you want to, but use your own crayons, mine are taken):

The Schedule. Complaints about the current non-conference schedule are justified. Just look at the teams we’re currently playing compared to the past 30 years. It's laughable.

Sidebar: How’d we get here? It’s just conjecture, but I think it’s obvious. Given what Mr. Turner saw while he was at the helm steering the ship into every reef he could find, and Mr. Woodward’s look at what little lumber and the few only nearly-drowned sailors that were left, I’m sure that "well, that’s enough of that s**t" became the new scheduling dogma. Every college football game is scheduled 193 years in advance on average. Or 6. Or…something. It’s not a coincidence that Washington’s non-conference schedule has dwindled significantly for the first time in 30 years right after going through that awful stretch. If you are trying to rebuild a program, one marquee non-conference game a year is a lot more realistic than three. One loss is just a loss that draws a crowd. Three is a bad trend. Let’s remember Woodward is an SEC man as well, and we are now are facing an SEC schedule. It’s also a two way street: other ADs want a Major Opponent, and for a time, Washington did not meet that requirement. Scheduling Washington was just inviting the possibility of losing to a pretty bad team. A team with few wins but just enough NFL talent to maybe beat you. Not somebody I’d put on the schedule for a home and home. (I’d be very interested to see who the old guard have been playing in our absence…the Michigans, the Ohio States, the Miamis, etc. BYU and Nebraska seemed to have remained loyal, although, like Washington, both programs have seen better days.)

Fans. Fans hung on through mediocrity until 2004. Beat soundly by Fresno State at home. Destroyed by Notre Dame. The bubble was burst, and it hasn’t reinflated yet. It appears that fan support for the less than quality opponents was not an issue during UW’s illustrious years. It became an issue immediately once it was clear those years had come to an end. Maybe because regular season games used to be all sold out, so you could only get tickets to Idaho if you wanted to see them play? Maybe because everybody went to every game? Or maybe because losing to the Nevadas of the world at home, and getting stomped by long time national rivals year after year, quickly becomes unpalatable? Maybe the TV, maybe the Seahawks, maybe the fan experience, maybe the student section, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe its all of them. All I can say is there is historic correlation regarding fan attendance at Washington for non-conference games, and it’s not the quality of opponent that appears to be the controlling variable. It’s the losing.

The future: solving the problem. There are three techniques that appear to have worked over the years on Montlake.

Technique 1: Schedule all major power non-conference opponents. Result: non-conference games are well attended.

Technique 2: Win a lot of games every year. Result: non-conference games are very well-attended.

Technique 3: A combination of the two. Result: I finally achieve and briefly maintain an erec…errrr…non-conference games are incredibly well-attended!

Will Washington ever return to the glory days of scheduling? It is possible, but I think not. 7-4 used to be able to sneak you into a Rose Bowl. Now, two conference losses and you are probably done. OOC scheduling doesn’t affect conference records, I know, but an 0-3 start ain’t a real confidence booster. Wait, no, you want to be a national champion? Well, then one loss may just might keep you out. If the playoff format is expanded, and strength of schedule begins to be weighted higher than beating three inferior opponents an average of 98-3 (I’m looking at you, SEC), then we are one of the few schools who has historically scheduled an incredible OOC lineup on a very regular basis. I’d love to to see it come back: when we're ready. It’s healthy to keep in mind that we are comparing our current scheduling to the already built Don James era juggernauts and the reputation that followed the program for many many years afterwards. Scheduling the 2008 slate and getting bludgeoned only sets us back.

But you know what will happen if we go 9-3, 10-2, 11-1, 9-3 over the next 4 years? All this is a moo point (like a cow’s opinion, nobody cares, thanks Joe). The Ohio States and the Oklahoma States will be back once or twice a decade like they used to be, and we the fans can puff out our saggy chests with pride because we’ve earned it (I mean that; there have been some dark times requiring a lot of effort to maintain an unhealthy level of fanaticism). But go 6-6 a couple more years? Then only the diehard fans will be at every game and attendance may decrease even further.

In the end, even if the schedule never returns to its former glory, 11-1 is 11-1. A Rose Bowl is a Rose Bowl. And for now, the schedule we have is the schedule we have. Chris Petersen has said it himself: we need to win. For what it's worth UW’s current non-conference schedule helps achieve that goal.