La. Tech shuffles 2016 schedule to get out of SEC West

The 2016 football schedule Louisiana Tech athletic director Tommy McClelland inherited back in 2013 could have allowed the Bulldogs to petition for a one-year membership into the Southeastern Conference Western Division.

With a few contract changes and the help from a fellow athletic director, Tech swapped a potential non-conference gauntlet of Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Arkansas to Texas Tech, Arkansas and UMass.

“We were in the SEC West essentially when I first took over the job,” McClelland told The News-Star on Wednesday. “My first reaction was I gotta provide our team the opportunity to be competitive. That’s just brutal.”

It might not have the same firepower — Tech now has three road games and still needs to add an FCS home game for 2016 — but once the details are digested, McClelland said it made the most sense.

Tech fans are most interested in the previously scheduled 2016 home game against Mississippi State in Ruston. The game has not been cancelled, just merely pushed back to 2017. The two teams were already scheduled to play in Starkville in 2017, a game that will now happen 2021 or 2022.

As for Texas A&M, administrators at the school approached McClelland about buying the game out for $500,000. Texas A&M was only paying Tech $200,000 to make the return trip from a 2012 meeting in Shreveport, so it made sense financially once Texas Tech called.

The Red Raiders offered Tech a $800,000 game guarantee, meaning Tech will end up netting $300,000 — instead of $200,000 — once Texas A&M is paid for breaking the terms of the contract.

Tech and Texas Tech signed the contract last fall, and it seems unlikely the Texas A&M game could be pushed back to a later date instead of an outright buyout.

“I was just trying to manage the ’16 schedule as best as possible,” McClelland said. “We think we have a chance to continue to be pretty good. As we continue that momentum to ’16, we want to do our best to give our players and fans the opportunity to continue to be successful.”

In both cases, McClelland was contacted about making the potential schedule changes. Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin called McClelland in 2013 after McClelland was hired at Tech and asked if he wanted to move the game back to 2017.

It was a no-brainer.

“When I looked at it, I said I want the home game,” McClelland said. “I’m still going to get the home game, I’m just going to get it in another year, but I have to mitigate and break this down a little bit because you can argue the SEC West is the best conference in football.”

One of the determining factors in moving Mississippi State dated all the way back to previous contracts signed by former Tech athletic directors Derek Dooley and Bruce Van De Velde.

Tech was scheduled to play Mississippi State four straight seasons in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 — once in Ruston and three in Starkville — due to two separate contracts.

The 2015 meeting in October is a game guarantee and 2016 was scheduled as the beginning of a home-and-home. However, Mississippi State didn’t owe Tech anything for 2017 and 2018.

“We want to play the games with Mississippi State, don’t get me wrong,” McClelland said. “I don’t know if their fans want to see Louisiana Tech four years in a row on the schedule. We needed to spread that out and create some breathing room.”

Instead of doing a straight 2-for-1, most schools — like Tech did with its upcoming series with Baylor — do a guarantee game and a home-and-home to make up the three games. In certain cases, the back-end return game will be pushed back years later, like Tech did with Mississippi State.

One of the return trips from the old three-game contract between Tech and Mississippi State just so happened to fall within the current three-game deal, which included a guarantee game in Starkville (2015) along with a home game in Ruston (2016) and a return trip to Starkville for no additional money.

McClelland discussed the difficulties of inheriting a schedule — at Oklahoma and Auburn in 2014, at Kansas State and Mississippi State in 2015, but noted that Tech was contracted for all of these games.

Luckily, Stricklin worked out the details with McClelland.

“Even though it’s not my signature, I’m obligated to do that,” he said. “We kicked that (Mississippi State) game to either 2021 or 2022. It allows for spacing.”

The third game at UMass is part of a home-and-home with a return trip in Ruston set for either 2018 or 2019.

McClelland said he had numerous calls from Power Five schools for guarantee games, a move that would have put him right back into the same predicament he inherited.

Instead, he struck a deal at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, with UMass, which is searching for FBS home games during its transition to independent status.

“UMass has a great on-campus facility, but you have the opportunity to play in a professional stadium and get your kids that experience,” he said. “It’s not the reason we did it, but it was definitely brought up by me. I didn’t just want to sign a home-and-home.”

Connect with Sean Isabella on Twitter at ST_IsabellaTNS