MOBILE, Ala. – Once the University of South Alabama’s Board of Trustees voted to add a football program as the school’s 17th sport on Dec. 6, 2007, many of the pieces have fallen into place without much difficulty moving from the start-up phase to actual competition.
Hiring the first-ever head coach wasn’t an issue, as former Director of Athletics Joe Gottfried and the university’s search committee had plenty of qualified candidates to choose from before selecting Joey Jones for the position. And since the day of Jones’ introduction two months later, the Mobile native rarely if ever encountered any difficulties in putting together his staff or finding over hundreds of student-athletes who wanted to represent the school on the field.
Scheduling for the fledgling program, however, is a story unto itself. With the aggressive approach taken by the administration in moving to the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly NCAA I-A) level within five years, there have been two different phases in determining who the Jaguars have since played and who they will compete against in the future.
In the first two seasons of competition in the fall of 2009 and ’10, USA was not classified as an NCAA program, thus the focus was on finding a combination of opponents against whom the Jags would have a reasonable chance to win more than they lost while growing the fan base. In year one, the Jaguars’ seven contests consisted of four prep school opponents, two junior colleges and an NCAA Division III program; a year later, the schedule was upgraded to include 10 games — all versus four-year schools — against foes from the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly NCAA I-AA), NCAA Division II and NAIA levels.
Now that the school is beginning a two-year transition to the FBS level and Sun Belt Conference membership in 2013, the schedule will change. Not only will the Jags take on all Division I schools beginning in 2012, but they will also count that fall on opposing schedules toward potential bowl eligibility.
“There is no doubt that things have changed. When we talk about our schedules now from this point forward it’s a totally different look,” Jones stated. “We had to do a little explaining in the first couple of years that we were going to get there, but weren’t quite there yet. Now we can say, we’re going to be Division I from this point forward and that makes a great difference in our schedule.”
So what are the factors that have gone into how USA has approached the task?
“What we look at and examine is the relative balance of home and away contests and the perceived quality of those games. There is a delicate balance between what is the right team to play at a certain time and where it is potentially placed within the schedule,” explained Dr. Joel Erdmann, the school’s current Director of Athletics. “We want to create schedules that give us a reasonable chance to be successful, but at the same time are also challenging. In a perfect world, for instance, we try to stay away from back-to-back or back-to-back-to-back high-end games.
“A schedule has ebbs and flows, there are crescendos and swales; you want to maintain a certain level of difficulty that is somewhat consistent and stay away from peaks and valleys.”
With that foundation in place, Assistant Director of Athletics Haven Fields knows how to approach all potential future opponents, whether they are members of the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 Conferences or belong to Conference-USA and the Mid-American Conference.
“One of the things that I look for is that there is an opportunity for us to have some financial gain if we are looking at a guarantee. Secondly, it depends on who it is and whether or not we have a chance to compete and win,” he said. “When you look at the BCS conferences — the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12 — most people don’t expect you to win those since they are guarantee games. But at the end of the day, I’m looking at a financial gain to help the university and athletic department but also the chance that we can sneak up on someone and be victorious in the process too.”
For Jones, those aren’t the only factors that matter when determining who the Jaguars will play down the road. Ultimately, it is he who will be judged on the won-loss record that is affected by the schedule, and who USA faces has a direct impact on the level of student-athlete he can recruit to the program.
“First of all, we want to play a schedule that is appealing to our recruits,” he said. “We want to have a great mixture between the teams we’re already playing in the Sun Belt, at least one or two games against what most people call ‘big-time’ programs and we would like to try to have an FCS program on the schedule. Some years didn’t go that way, but you try to work it out that way if you can. And not only is it appealing to recruits, but we think it will make us better playing those types of football teams.”
So far, the school has signed three different types of contracts with other Division I opponents. The Jags have deals in place to take on five of the 12 members of the SEC, with four of those one-game arrangements for USA to play on the road: Tennessee in 2013, Georgia a year later, Louisiana State in ’16 and Mississippi the following fall. USA also has signed a two-for-one contract with Mississippi State for a series that will see the Jaguars play in Starkville in 2012 and ’16, with the Bulldogs slated to come to Mobile in 2014.
In addition, the Jags have similar deals with North Carolina State (away in 2011 and ’12, home in ’15) and Oklahoma State (home in 2017, away in ’18 and ’20).
Knowing that schools from the SEC, ACC and Big 12 are set to give USA a home game has both Erdmann and Jones excited about the direction of the program.
“I think it is very exciting. We’re fortunate to have schools of the nature of Mississippi State, North Carolina State and Oklahoma State that are willing to do that,” the former commented. “From a scheduling and budgetary standpoint, we’ve got to be careful that those three-year deals — if that’s what they are — don’t stack upon one another because that throws off a rotation. If you do a two-for-one, you tend to play it and finish the series before you start another one. Those are things that we will examine going forward, but we also work hard at getting some of those teams to go straight home-and-home; sometimes it’s a little difficult to convince them to do that, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t try.”
“There is no doubt that those games will be a great stepping stone for the success of our program,” the latter added. “Playing schools like that here just brings credibility to our program, and obviously the people in town will be extremely excited about that. We did some two-for-one deals in order to get them at home, but I think in the long run it was a great decision for our program.
“It’s been about what I expected as we begin the Division I transition process and move forward,” Jones continued. “You have a ton of schools in the SEC and ACC looking for games and opponents to bring into their stadiums, so I figured we would be a target for a lot of those people, especially early on. I thought getting those types of games would be easy, it just came down to the negotiations.”
In order to bring balance to future schedules, USA has home-and-home agreements with several schools in the region to fill out its non-conference slate. The first of those is with Navy, which beginning in 2013 will alternate playing host to the Jaguars in Annapolis and visiting Mobile. The Jags will play Louisiana Tech in 2017-18, Tulane in ’19-20 and Southern Mississippi in ’20-21 as well.
“The fact of the matter is budgets — and projecting them five, six, seven years from now — does influence the number of non-return guarantee games we play. Those are games which are challenging because one, they are on the road and they are not coming back, and two, obviously they are against very good programs,” observed Erdmann. “Our fans, I think, prefer for us to play at home — which we do too — and I think those regional home-and-home series with Southern Miss, Louisiana Tech and Tulane are attractive because it’s tremendous competition at home, but then it’s also a drivable road game to Hattiesburg, Ruston or New Orleans.
“I think our student-athletes enjoy the challenge of the guarantee games, the ‘playing up’ games, and you have a chance at that win; it’s exhilarating and exciting to run into some of those stadiums before the game, and to play in that type of environment. But you’ve got to provide those at appropriate doses and frequencies.”
So how do these arrangements come about? It’s handled in different ways at various institutions, whether it’s done by the athletic director, another administrator in the department or the head coach. At USA, those responsibilities have mainly fallen on Fields.
According to the former Auburn linebacker, it’s a process that can last anywhere from just over a week to almost a month from start to finish. “It depends on how aggressive the opposing institution is in getting something finalized,” he said. “We are real aggressive on our end in scheduling, we go right into it — our negotiations with other schools are intense. The problem sometimes is that other universities may have a protocol that requires them to go to their coach or an athletic director for approval, which takes some time.”
Initially, Fields — who joined the staff in December 2008 — would set aside two or three days a week, and sometimes as many as four hours a day, to call prospective opponents. That would include making contact with anywhere from 20-25 other schools, and he had to keep in the back of his mind the need to keep a balance between guarantee games and finding opponents willing to agree to multiple-year deals — in the last couple of years, those figures have gone down.
“At this point it doesn’t require as much time because we have done a great job of putting non-conference opponents on the schedule all the way through 2020,” stated Fields. “With the league going to nine conference games — which leaves only three games for us to schedule — we have about 95 percent of ours done through that year.”
One factor that has helped Fields in the scheduling endeavor is the fact that many of the individuals he has contacted throughout the country were aware of what South Alabama was doing with the direction of its football program; he has even been aided by the success of another Jaguar program too.
“Actually, I have been pretty surprised,” he said. “There are some schools who already know who we are and have kept up with what we are doing — we have some fans out at other institutions who like how we have been doing this and the way we have brought our program along. There are others who don’t know a whole lot about us, though they have heard of the university.
“When you talk to most people, they bring up the basketball program; they remember what we did in 2007-08. I think that what we have done the last two seasons has helped so that now when I call people they’ve heard about South Alabama as well as some of the other start-up programs. There are some folks who have been watching us.”
Many would think that meeting the needs of three individuals in putting together schedules and determining future opponents would be a difficult process, but it has not turned out that way for the trio of Erdmann, Fields and Jones. Early on, two or all three would meet to discuss progress and potential schools to face, but that has diminished as each has learned what the others are attempting to accomplish.
“Haven does a lot of the calling around just to see what open dates there are, then he comes to me with options asking what I like,” Jones explained. “The great thing is that we all work together and that it goes through a three-part process to get approved — if Haven, Dr. Erdmann or myself don’t like it, we cut it out; obviously, the president has to approve all of it in the end. I think it’s tremendous that all three of us have been in agreement to get these schools already on our future schedules.”
“In the beginning I spent a lot of time with coach Jones because this is his team and ultimately his legacy, so we wanted to make sure there was an opportunity for him to be successful,” Fields observed. “Now I’ve got a feel for what he wants, and having spent time with Joel I understand where he is on scheduling. Now I’ll let them know who we have the opportunity to negotiate with for a guarantee and who we’re talking to about potential series down the road, so we don’t have to actually sit down in meetings about scheduling anymore.”
“Ultimately my signature is going on the contracts,” added Erdmann. “I was more intimately involved in the day-to-day communication of the schedule at North Alabama and Southeastern Louisiana; here I am very fortunate to have an administrator that makes those initial contacts that begins negotiations in Haven. I think between myself, Haven and coach Jones, we communicate about potential games and try to get as much consensus as we can have. Haven carries the load, and it can be an interesting one in maintaining communication and negotiations with sometimes five, 10 or 15 schools at one time where you are putting the pieces of the puzzle together in a schedule that is seven years out.”
Ultimately what may have tested Fields the most throughout the process is his ability to sell USA’s program in order to attract other institutions to agree to take on the Jags at some point down the road. Not so much with schools from the bigger conferences, but in coming to agreements with comparable schools in the region.
“When you talk about BCS schools, they are looking for a team to put on the schedule for a win; I don’t have to do a lot of selling,” said Fields. “When you start looking at multiple-game series there are probably programs that never thought about coming to Mobile, so that’s where the work comes in with how I sell the program and why they should come here.
“A lot of times, I have to explain to potential opponents our body of work to this point and where we are headed in the future; if they know that we are negotiating with other schools in their league, they realize it may not be a bad idea for them to play us.
“At the end of the day it just comes down to what makes sense for that institution, because with where we are and how aggressive we’ve been in scheduling, we’ll play anybody,” he added. “I think that’s how we continue to build a tradition with South Alabama football.”
And thanks to the efforts of the league office and how they administer the task, Fields has not been limited when talking to other schools about potential playing dates. “The way the Sun Belt Conference office has set it up, you can go ahead and negotiate and get your non-conference games out of the way; it doesn’t matter what date you schedule, they work around it,” he noted. “The league does a really good job with that, so we can schedule on any given day.”
What the Jaguars’ schedule looks like beginning in 2012 took another big step forward last week when SBC athletic directors approved future league schedules through the 2019 campaign. USA — which will count as a league opponent and appear in the standings in ’12, though be ineligible for the SBC title that year — will not play Western Kentucky that fall, North Texas the first year it can win the conference championship and appear in a bowl game, and Florida International in ’14. Beginning in 2015, the Jags’ Sun Belt home-away stagger will include games in Mobile against Arkansas State, FIU, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe with trips to Florida Atlantic, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Troy and Western Kentucky — in even-numbered years, the schedules will flip.
USA’s 2012 Sun Belt schedule includes games against FAU, FIU, MT and Troy at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, with the Jags set to visit ASU, ULL, ULM and NT. That fall’s non-conference slate will have the Jaguars opening the campaign with back-to-back home games against Texas-San Antonio and Nicholls State on Sept. 1 and 8 followed by consecutive road contests at N.C. State and Mississippi State. They will play a 13th game that fall, ending the year with a Dec. 1 trip to Hawai’i as well.
Per Sun Belt Conference policy, dates are not announced until March 1 prior to a season. Times are released later in the summer to allow kickoff to be adjusted to accommodate any television appearances.
It took over 40 years for the University of South Alabama to start a football program. But thanks to the efforts of a handful of individuals on campus and contacts with countless schools across the country, the process establishing who, where and when the Jaguars will play down the road required a minimal amount of time.
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
—USA—
South Alabama Future Football Opponents
