University of Virginia Library

the sports scene

Big Brother
Notre Dame

by bob cullen

IN BLITHE DISREGARD of George Orwell's gloomy prediction
for the future of the world, Athletic Director Steve Sebo is
presently busy arranging football games into the 1980's, a job
that in today's college football context requires the foresight of
a medieval seer, and the bargaining skill of an Italian fruit
vendor.

Conference games are easy. Mr. Sebo knows who he has to
play, and he knows that he definitely has to play them. As a
result, Virginia's ACC schedule is set for the next 12 years. The
Cavaliers will face all the conference teams each season, with the
exception of Clemson and South Carolina, who alternate with
each other on the Virginia schedule. Maryland will be the final
game of the season in every year but 1972.

BUT WHEN IT COMES to non-Conference clashes, the
factors that influence scheduling become complex and
numerous. The ideal opponent for one of these games would be
a school that has a good name in football circles, that comes
from another section of the country, and that would be willing
to play a home and home series. Ideally, there would be one or
two really top-notch teams from within this segment of the
schedule, like Purdue.

Such games provide a challenge to the team that they may
not always get from the conference slate, the opportunity to
play a ranked team. They are a cautiously optimistic hedge
against the year when the Cavaliers have a team that may have a
chance to be Number One, and may need a win over a really
important team to provide the credentials. They are also
guaranteed money makers.

WHICH BRINGS US to perhaps the foremost consideration
in the scheduling of outside games, that filthy lucre. There is
never any trouble in scheduling games with intersectional foes.
The problem is getting them to come to Charlottesville. Why
should a team like Purdue, which can fill a 60,000 seat stadium
almost anywhere in the country, (including, of course, their
own) come to Virginia to play in a 25,000 capacity facility that
hasn't been full in three years? By the same token, Virginia's
series with Tulane will terminate soon, not because the
competition wasn't good enough, but because Tulane wasn't
drawing enough fans into the Sugar Bowl to make the visitor's
cut of the gate worth the expense of flying to New Orleans.

So Mr. Sebo finds himself in the position of being a welcome
guest but a poor host when he schedules his intersectional
games. Thus, the next ten years will see thy Cavaliers playing
such teams as Michigan and Missouri away, and less interesting
Army, Vanderbilt, Colgate, Syracuse, and West Virginia in Scott
Stadium.

NEGOTIATIONS ARE CURRENTLY underway in an attempt
to set the Virginia schedule for the late 1970's and early
1980's, and Mr. Sebo is gambling that Virginia will continue at
its present rate of football development and be able to cope
with some of the teams he is attempting to line up.

PURDUE WOULD LIKE to play Virginia again. The Cavaliers
helped to draw the biggest opening day crowd in
Boilermaker history. Serious negotiations are underway with the
University of Washington to fill an open date by going out to
the West Coast in 1977. Texas is considering a brief home and
home series with the Wahoos for the early 1980's, and to top it
off, Mr. Sebo has been in touch with Notre Dame about playing
them sometime within the next 20 years. Thus it is very possible
that Virginia might come up against college football's version of
Big Brother in the very year of his predicted dominance.

But to get Big Brother to come to Charlottesville will require
big changes in the Stadium and the number of people that are in
it on Saturdays. Scott Stadium was designed to make it easy to
add another deck, fill in the slope on the scoreboard end with
seats, and increase the capacity to about 50,000. This, however,
is not going to happen when only 14,000 show up for the games
played now, as happened last Saturday. Until attendance begins
to climb, it seems that the only important games played in Scott
Stadium will be with ACC opponents, who have to play here
every other year. The attendance problem will only be solved
when there is a consistent winner, and the state provides the
roads to make Charlottesville more easily accessible from the
population centers.