Have you heard of the Roadrunners? Me neither. But UVa Football has scheduled a home-and-away series with the University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners, a team that currently, well, does not exist. The two teams will first meet on November 2, 2013 in Charlottesville, then Virginia will travel to the Alamodome on November 8, 2014 to complete the series. It's a move I don't yet comprehend.
UTSA signed its first class back in February, but will be redshirting all of its incoming players for the 2010-11 season. They'll begin play as an independent in the FCS in 2011, and by 2014, they'll have applied to transition to full FBS status. They're coached by former Miami head coach Larry Coker.
UTSA's schedule so far includes the following: Northeastern, Louisiana Tech, Colorado State, Houston, Kansas State, Arizona, Arizona State and Baylor.
The Cavaliers will be allowed to count both games towards their FBS win counts, but that certainly doesn't seem enough of a reason to schedule this. What's Mike London thinking here? If we win, there's little-to-no glory in beating a brand new program. If we lose -- well, I don't think we need to rehash William & Mary all over again.
The only thing I can think about is that perhaps he wanted to schedule a Texas team to be able to recruit in that area. But even so, I can't comprehend why he would pick a brand new program.
Perhaps the reasoning is not nearly as charitable as we are making it out to me. Is it possible that no one wanted to play Virginia? With the idea being that, there's no glory in beating a program that went 3-9 last year, and all the shame in the world in losing? Surely opponents can't be expecting our program to be in complete shambles in 2013/14, right?
Right?