COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’87 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : SCHEDULING A FIESTA : Today’s College Game Is as Much Getting Weaker Foes as It Is Beating Them

Guess what Texas Tech, Northern Illinois, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Tulsa, Temple, Rutgers and Syracuse have in common.

Give up?

Maybe that’s what those teams should have done last season. But here are the two things they have in common: Penn State and Miami. Each of them played one or the other of those college football powers. Actually, it’s three things if you want to count getting crushed.

That, by the way, is just what happened to East Carolina, the only team in the country that played both Penn State and Miami last year. The combined score of their games against the Nittany Lions and the Hurricanes was 78-17, which automatically qualified the Pirates for Least Carolina status.

You might think that for two such highly regarded teams as Penn State and Miami to play such lightly regarded schedules, it would be kind of a comedown for them. You might also want to reconsider. It paid off.

Both the Nittany Lions and the Hurricanes were 11-0 when they met in the Fiesta Bowl, where each collected a tidy $2.4 million.

It was all a matter of simple mathematics, all right. Add up the wins. Then divide the loot.

But it’s sure going to be different this year. Penn State has added always tough Bowling Green to the schedule. The Hurricanes? Heck, they’ve added the dreaded Toledo Rockets, and you know they’re really going to boost the old schedule.

You know something else? In three of the last five years, either Penn State or Miami has been the national champion. Miami won in 1983, Penn State in 1982 and ’86.

So what does that make Penn State Coach Joe Paterno?

“About the most intelligent guy I know of,” said Texas A&M; Coach Jackie Sherrill, who never was Paterno’s pal, even before Sherrill split from Pitt.

“I have more respect for Joe Paterno now than I ever did when we were playing him. And it has nothing to do with how I feel about him personally, which is another matter. But I’ll tell you this, Joe Paterno and the people at Penn State take care of Penn State. The same thing’s true at Miami.”

It’s probably not fair to point out just Penn State and Miami as teams that play such, well, light schedules. (Less filling?). Look around and you can see a lot of less-than-intense scheduling going on these days in college football. You don’t need a scoreboard to keep track of such schedules as much as you need a paperweight.

Take Oklahoma, for instance. The Sooners are the nation’s top-ranked team, but their schedule is rated the 72nd toughest in the country, according to USA Today, which uses computations by an MIT mathematics graduate.

Poor old Rice, which hasn’t had a winning season for probably as far back as when there weren’t any Southwest Conference teams on probation, plays a more difficult schedule than Oklahoma’s.

That’s not entirely the Sooners’ fault, though. Sure, North Texas State is on the schedule, but Oklahoma also is lucky enough to be playing in a woefully weak Big Eight Conference. Last year, excluding the Sooners and Nebraska, the conference was 26-41.

This scheduling thing is all the rage now. Everybody’s doing it. Even Notre Dame, which will play the most difficult schedule of any team in the nation this year, according to the ratings, has announced plans to ease off.

The Irish, who went 5-6 last season, playing a schedule that included seven teams in the top 20, are scheduling into the 1990s and lining up Miami of Ohio, Duke, Northwestern and Virginia.

Although that scheduling decision was made before he got there, it didn’t take Richard Rosenthal, in his first year as Notre Dame’s athletic director after succeeding Gene Corrigan, long to grasp the formula:

Winning = bowls = money .

“Bowl opportunities and financial rewards are unquestionably in line for a team with a winning record,” he said in what may rank among college football’s classic understatements.

And how those bowl games pay off. Last season, the 18 bowls paid out close to $47 million. It’s going to be more than $50 million this season, according to Jim Brock, executive director of the Cotton Bowl.

The top five Bowl payoffs of 1987 were the Rose Bowl’s $6.017 million; the Sugar Bowl’s $2.55 million, the Orange Bowl’s $2.468 million, the Fiesta’s $2.4 million, the Cotton Bowl’s $2.162 million, and the Florida Citrus’ $900,000. And that’s for each team.

Two questions need to be asked.

Do schools sometimes schedule weaker teams so they can bowl for big dollars?

“Sure, there’s a lot of money out there,” Brock said.

And is there anything wrong doing that?

“Not a thing,” Sherrill said. “That’s the cold, hard facts and that’s the way it is. If I was there at Penn State, I’d do the same thing.”

In fact, he did the same thing when he was at Pitt. Sherrill put together a typical independent’s recipe for getting to a bowl game. It’s not a schedule, really, it’s a hit list.

“You play six people you know you’re going to beat,” Sherrill said. “I mean, even if you lose your first-team quarterback, you’re still going to beat those six. Then you schedule two or three people you are always going to beat because you’re always going to out-recruit them. Then you play two or three other people that’s a tossup, a 50-50 chance.

“So with any luck, you’re looking at an automatic 9-2 and maybe an 11-0 if those 50-50s come through for you,” he said. “Now look at Penn State’s schedule. Think you can find those six people they’re going to beat?”

Jim Tarman is Penn State’s athletic director and over the years has become increasingly annoyed with the critics who poke fun at his schedule. It’s all how you look at it, he said.

“We get that schedule flak all the time,” Tarman said. “I’m not going to defend our schedule. We’re always going to play the nucleus of our games against Eastern teams. And as far as our other games go, they’re no more different than OU versus Iowa State in that conference.

“That’s something which is always used against us, that conference-affiliated teams play a tougher schedule. Like there’s something magical about playing in a conference. I often laugh about that. I don’t think we have to defend our schedule. It’s better than some teams’ in conferences.”

Said Sherrill: “That’s not true. They can be defensive about it. That’s fine. But they should be taking bows instead. I remember once when we lost a game at Pitt. The first thing the administration said was, ‘Well, that cost us a million dollars.’ ”

In any event, Penn State is doing some improving with its schedule. The Nittany Lions have a home-and-home series on the books with USC, beginning in 1992, and it may go longer. They also have Alabama through 1990, Texas in 1988 and ’89 and Brigham Young in 1990 and 1991. Tarman has also talked with Washington, Stanford, North Carolina and Air Force.

Just as does Miami, Penn State attempts to schedule at least six home games each season and that immediately causes problems. Tarman, in fact, prefers seven home games, which is even harder.

Penn State needs home games to fund its athletic programs, which cost $13 million to run and are supported primarily on football income and fund-raising efforts.

The Cincinnatis and East Carolinas and Toledos that Penn State and Miami play are good choices not only because they belong in Sherrill’s group of six. Unlike some of the bigger, better, established schools that will agree to a series only if it is home and home, the beatables are happy for a trip and a payday.

“To get teams to play here and not to go back to their places, you have to get less than big-time teams,” Tarman said. “Heck, our fans will come to see us play nine home games. They don’t care who we play.”

How much is it worth to play Penn State at University Park? Tarman said it could be worth as much as $400,000 to USC, excluding guarantees.

Tarman said he is continually mystified about the annual rapping of Penn State’s schedule. Outside of jealousy, he can’t come up with a reason.

“I don’t know, but apparently it doesn’t matter who we play,” he said. “We beat Miami, the No. 1 team, and they still say we don’t play anybody. It’s just the Penn State thing. They can’t find anything to criticize us about, so they picked scheduling.”

And is that why you’re playing Temple?

“We need Temple,” he said.

Why?

“To expose our team in the Philadelphia area,” he said.

Of course.

“Look, all I know is if we’re going to be criticized for playing nobody, so be it,” Tarman said. “We’ll just go on beating the nobodies and winning our bowl games.”

Beating the nobodies or beating the somebodies, apparently nobody cares. Certainly not the people who count. Those are the bowl people. Know why they don’t care? Because the television people don’t care, that’s why.

The object of the game is not which team plays the best schedule, but which team wins the most games.

“I can’t recall one time that I ever looked at a team’s schedule when we were discussing who to invite,” Brock said. “We don’t tell the institutions who to play. I don’t care who they beat. That’s not part of our criteria.

“You know, this whole scheduling thing is done for money,” he said. “Why do you think North Texas is playing Oklahoma? Do you think it’s a mismatch? Well, (North Texas Coach) Corky Nelson said they’re going to get $200,000 for that one game.

“On the other hand, OU had a chance to get another win. And those people up there don’t give a damn who they play to get it.”

There are exceptions, of course. One of them might be UCLA, although on a less dramatic scale. At the moment, the Bruins’ season-ticket sales are down from last year, which Athletic Director Peter T. Dalis blames on the two non-conference games on the six-game home schedule against San Diego State and Fresno State.

“Part of our philosophy is to schedule attractive intersectional teams,” Dalis said. “Obviously, this year we did not do that and it’s being reflected in our season-ticket sales.”

UCLA’s six-game series with Nebraska resumes this year after a two-year layoff, but the game will be played in Lincoln. The Bruins have home games scheduled in the Rose Bowl with Nebraska in 1988 and 1993, Tennessee and Michigan in 1988 and 1989, Oklahoma in 1990, BYU in 1993 and Miami in 1995.

Meanwhile, USC is filling in some holes on its schedule through 1996. Assistant athletic director Marvin Cobb, who helps Athletic Director Mike McGee on scheduling, said that the Trojans have six dates left open. One of those is Sept. 9, 1988, and Cobb said the Trojans have two goals in mind for getting a game.

“It’s a balancing between a worthwhile game and a quality opponent with television revenues,” he said. “We’re looking to make money. This is USC. We can beat anybody. That’s not our concern.”

It may become one. USC’s schedule is rated the seventh-toughest in the nation. UCLA’s is No. 6. By comparison, Penn State’s is No. 25, Miami’s No. 33.

Way down at No. 55, Texas A&M;’s Sherrill said it is important for his Aggies to play on television, to win on television. The problem with that strategy is that you’ve got to play somebody pretty decent to get on television in the first place.

Of the 63 teams in the College Football Assn. (CFA), Sherrill said that 21 did not play a single televised game last season.

“That’s a third of the teams,” he said. “And I’ll tell you, (the television networks) are not going to put anybody on that’s not going to sell advertising. Penn State and Rutgers is not going to be on TV. Texas A&M; and Louisiana Tech is not going to be on TV. For us to get national exposure, we have to play somebody. We do that and we’re liable to get beat. There goes that million dollars again.”

In Miami, Hurricane Coach Jimmy Johnson is blowing hot and cold over attendance, which, of course, means money. The Hurricanes will play seven home games this season at the Orange Bowl, including their last five, but Johnson said it has been difficult competing for the city’s entertainment dollar.

Season-ticket sales have reached an all-time high, but that’s only 25,000, Johnson said. Miami did not sell out a single home game last year, not even the one against Oklahoma. So Johnson is trying something different with the Hurricanes’ schedule. It, too, is getting more difficult. Miami has added Arkansas, but the first game in the series is not scheduled for the Orange Bowl.

“In order for us to pull in crowds, we have to have a top-notch opponent,” said Johnson. “But we’ve had difficulty in getting them to the Orange Bowl. Our fans don’t seem to want to support that type of game. We tried to schedule Penn State, Arizona State, but there’s not a whole lot of teams who want to travel to Miami and play in a stadium that may or may not be sold out.”

Johnson agreed with Tarman, which may be the first time Penn State and Miami have agreed recently, when he said that playing a conference schedule is no more difficult than an independent’s schedule. Johnson pointed to the Big Eight and the Southwest Conference as examples.

“Obviously both leagues are really down, in my opinion,” he said. “We played Texas Tech last year and beat them badly, but they beat Texas and Arkansas in conference play and nobody talked about the schedule then. OU this year plays Nebraska, and whoever wins that game will probably get into the national championship game. Look at their schedules.”

All right, so look at those schedules everybody. Probably what will happen is that Oklahoma, Miami and Penn State will play a bunch of teams that are the next best things to open dates, then they’ll rake in a ton of money from bowl games and everyone can start arguing about what’s going to happen next year. That will put us right on schedule again.