Kelly Lyell

kellylyell@coloradoan.com

CSU athletic director Joe Parker is building challenging football schedules that coach Mike Bobo embraces rather than fears.

Upgrading the quality of Colorado State University's football schedules was a high priority for Parker when he was hired two years ago, and he's worked out some impressive deals.

"Literally, every idea I've brought to him (Bobo), every idea that we've discussed about opponents; there's been little hesitation on his part," Parker said.

Bring it on is Bobo's attitude.

"You want to recruit the best players in the country that want to play against high-level competition, and that's what we're selling; that we'll play anybody,'' Bobo said. "The saying's kind of 'anybody, anywhere,' but I think it's great that we're getting some of those teams to come here."

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Schools in the Power 5 conferences are the opponents fans want to see CSU play in its nonconference games and the quality of competition the Rams need to face if they hope to compete for Mountain West championships and berths in major bowl games, maybe even the College Football Playoff if they were to go undefeated in one of those seasons.

Parker admitted the Rams' 2017 and 2018 schedules might be more ambitious than he would prefer, with three schools in what are known as the Power 5 conferences on the four-game nonconference schedule for the first time since 2004, when the Rams faced the University of Colorado, Southern California and Minnesota in the first three games of a 4-7 season.

Oregon State will be the opponent for the first game at CSU's new on-campus stadium this fall, thanks to some last-minute maneuvering that gave the Rams an important bye week between road games Sept. 16 at Alabama and a Sept. 30 Mountain West opener at Hawaii.

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Parker has arranged for Arkansas to play a game in Fort Collins in 2018 by turning a guarantee game at Arkansas the following season into a home-and-home deal. The Rams also play another Southeastern Conference school in 2018 in Florida. And he's worked out home-and-home contracts that will bring SEC school Vanderbilt to CSU for games in 2021 and 2026, Texas Tech of the Big 12 Conference in 2025 and Arizona of the Pacific-12 in 2027.

In all, the Rams have scheduled at least two nonconference games against schools from Power 5 conferences four of the next five seasons. That's not an easy task given only one SEC school, Mississippi State in 1981, has ever played a game in Fort Collins, and only one school from a Power 5 conference, Minnesota in 2014, has visited CSU in the past 10 years.

"There are schools in the Power 5 that they've got an attitude that they want to control their schedule in a different way, and they have different objectives," Parker said. "But then there's been others, fortunately, that recognize that we have aspirations at a high level in intercollegiate athletics, and they like the strength of this university and who we are as it relates to the quality of academy here. You have enough conversations, and you start to see some alignments developing."

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Parker has used his own connections in college athletics to initiate and close some of the deals with schools in Power 5 conferences. He worked with Arkansas AD Jeff Long at Oklahoma and under AD Kirby Holcutt for five years at Texas Tech before coming to CSU. A connection CSU's longtime director of football operations Tom Ehlers had with Vanderbilt started the conversation for that four-game home-and-home series.

CSU's new $220 million on-campus stadium, with seating for 36,500 fans and total capacity of 41,000, the school's increasing national profile and the Northern Colorado region's draw as a tourist destination have helped draw some of those high-profile opponents.

Parker only had control over two nonconference games this season and one in 2018. He added this year's home game against Abilene Christian for what originally was going to be the opening game at the new stadium and the game against Oregon State as part of a home-and-home series that will send CSU to Corvallis, Oregon, for a game in 2020.

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And he reworked the Arkansas deal when he learned while on vacation overseas last summer that Michigan had backed out of a home-and-home contract, leaving the SEC school scrambling for another game in 2018. CSU had previously agreed to play a guarantee game in 2019 at Arkansas for $1.3 million.

Parker fired off a quick text message to Long, who had been in Fort Collins with his family visiting the Parkers a few weeks earlier, letting him know that CSU still had an open date in 2018, as well. The dates didn't work out at first, but with some shuffling of schedules and help from consultant Dave Brown, a former ESPN executive and his Gridiron database that includes every Division I school's future schedules, they were able to make it work.

"I called Dave and started looking at it, and he kind of put a pathway together that might lead us there," Parker said. "So Jeff and I and others started talking on the phone, and it involved us being able to move UTEP off Week 2 to send them to UNLV, and UNLV had had a verbal commitment to play New Mexico State, so Mario Mocchia, their AD, we had to talk to him about making that happen."

Also, the SEC had to grant Arkansas a waiver allowing it to count CSU as an opponent from a Power 5 conference in 2018-19 to comply with the conference's scheduling rules.

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Parker said Brown also played a significant role in getting the Oregon State game this fall moved up a month.

Other games against SEC opponents were already a done deal when Parker arrived. CSU's Sept. 16 game this fall at Alabama was part of a two-game guarantee, earning the Rams $1.5 million per game, worked out by former AD Jack Graham. The Sept. 15, 2018, game at Florida for a $2 million guarantee was part of the deal Florida made with CSU President and Chancellor Tony Frank to cover a $7 million buyout to hire coach Jim McElwain away from CSU after the 2014 season.

Parker's preferred formula for building football schedules is two games against Power 5 conference schools, one at home and one on the road; one game against another school in the Group of 5 conferences, such as the home-and-home series he worked out with Toledo of the Mid-American Conference for games 2019 and 2021; and a home game each year against a team from the lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision, such as Abilene Christian this year.

CSU's 10-year contract for annual games against the University of Colorado expires after the 2020 game in Fort Collins. CU has already filled the three nonconference slots on its schedules in 2021-22 with other opponents. But Parker said he and CU athletic director Rick George have a verbal agreement in place for games in 2023-24, one in Boulder and one in Fort Collins.

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The Rams, who play eight games a season – four at home and four on the road in the Mountain West – have filled their schedules through 2020 and only have one slot left to fill in 2021 after agreeing to a still-to-be-announced home game that season against FCS foe South Dakota State. They have two nonconference games against Power 5 conference schools on the schedule for 2025 and 2026 and one in 2027 and 2028.

It's a lot easier to schedule those games six and seven years in advance, he said, than two to three years out.

"I feel a lot better about where we're at now, working on games in 2021 and out," Parker said. "There's just a lot more options and a lot more people willing to have conversations."

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news



