Seth, your discussion about strength of schedule has me wondering what the actual process is for schools to create their schedules. Does the head coach control that? How far in advance are games scheduled? Do schools look at the opponent's future rosters to gauge how good (or bad) they will be when deciding on scheduling that team?
-- Chris Calvin, Indianapolis</p>
Excellent question. Each school puts together its own nonconference schedule. At many places, the head coach has broad discretion, though often times the athletic director will push him towards scheduling tougher opponents who will bring in more revenue. The schedules get done during the offseason, but many of the games are played as part of multiyear contracts. The most common is a home-and-home, but you will often see a series signed in a "two-for-one" deal, meaning a three-year deal where one team (usually the more prominent one) gets two games at home and plays one on the other team's floor.</p>
I'm sure it will shock Chris to learn that the upper echelon schools have a major advantage when it comes to putting together a nonconference schedule. That's because they have huge budgets to play what are known as "guarantee games," wherein they pay a mid- or low-major school upwards of $75,000 to come to their home gym and play a game with referees that the home school has basically selected. I often hear coaches from lesser programs complaining that the big boys can just "buy" a bunch of wins. Needless to say, if you're coaching at a quality mid-major program like Northern Iowa, BYU or Butler, it's darn near impossible to get a high-caliber opponent to come to your gym and play. If the big boys are going to deign to play those guys, they will do it either at a tournament that plays at a neutral site, or schedule a neutral-site road game (e.g., Illinois playing at the United Center instead of Champaign, or Duke playing at Madison Square Garden, a.k.a. Cameron North).</p>
People have tried to legislate fairness into this process, but the top-tier schools are always going to have an advantage over everyone else. That is, until I get appointed dictator of the sport. (Could happen any day now.) One of my first edicts would be to assign the last five teams from BCS conferences to receive at-large bids to the NCAA tournament to play true road games the following year against the top five mid-majors who were excluded. Wouldn't that be fun?</p>