{"id":488574,"date":"2026-02-25T00:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T00:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/488574\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T00:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T00:20:07","slug":"rece-davis-uses-duke-vs-michigan-basketball-game-to-claim-schools-should-schedule-big-non-conference-football-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/488574\/","title":{"rendered":"Rece Davis uses Duke vs. Michigan basketball game to claim schools should schedule big non-conference football games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Selection Sunday is on the horizon, No. 1 Michigan<\/a> and No. 3 Duke<\/a> faced off in a monstrous, non-conference matchup last Saturday night in Washington, D.C. The Blue Devils came out on top 68-63 in an extremely exciting game, which felt like a potential taste of the National Championship Game in April.<\/p>\n

The high-level non-conference game near the end of the regular season is a rarity nowadays in college sports. Most non-conference basketball games take place before conference play in January tips off, and most non-conference football games take place over the course of the first few weeks of the season.<\/p>\n

Following the success of the Duke\u2013Michigan game, ESPN\u2019s Rece Davis called for college football programs to continue to schedule high-level non-conference games. This comes in the wake of multiple series cancellations across the sport, including USC<\/a>\/Notre Dame<\/a>, Arizona State<\/a>\/Texas<\/a>, and Mississippi State<\/a>\/Texas Tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the buzz that was generated (Michigan vs. Duke), we started getting messages from other programs around the country,\u201d Davis said<\/a>. \u201c\u2018Hey, how can we do this? When can we get involved in one of these? How can we schedule some of this and do the same things that Michigan and Duke just did?\u2019 Michigan and Duke are two programs that don\u2019t necessarily need all of that extra exposure. They are premier programs in college basketball, yet they saw the value in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing I thought of as we started through this was the direct contract in the approach and thought process of (Duke head coach) Jon Scheyer<\/a> and (Michigan head coach) Dusty May<\/a> about playing this game at this point of the season, and the college football schedule and the conundrums we\u2019re seeing around the country with athletic directors and coaches evaluating whether they should play difficult non-conference schedules,\u201d Davis continued. \u201cParticularly, as their conferences expand their in-conference schedules, most notably in the SEC.\u201d<\/p>\n

With conferences expanding to nine-game conference schedules (most recently in the SEC), more of more of these programs are buying out of big-time non-conference games. To replace these games, \u2018cupcake\u2019 games are being added as free wins to the schedule. While beneficial to the program, it certainly isn\u2019t to fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a terrible idea and precedent for athletic directors and coaches to try to approach scheduling from the standpoint of \u2018I\u2019m worried about failure\u2019. If you approach anything in life from the point of \u201cI\u2019m worried I might fail,\u2019 it\u2019s almost a guarantee that you\u2019re going to. There have to be some kind of standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea of bagging these big-time non-conference games that people want to see\u2026 these games need to be played. They need to be played for the good of the enterprise, and they need to take the approach that Jon Scheyer and Dusty May took in basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Selection Sunday is on the horizon, No. 1 Michigan and No. 3 Duke faced off in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99663,99],"class_list":["post-488574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-rece-davis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}