MTSU to play BYU Sept. 27

[Harry]

MURFREESBORO — MTSU’s football team will face BYU in football this season for a Friday game on Sept. 27 as announced by Director of Athletics Chris Massaro. A game time and television possibilities will be released at a later date.

The Blue Raiders and Cougars will be meeting for the first time in football.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/D4/20130128/BLUERAIDERS01/301280040/MTSU-play-BYU-Sept-27

This is a nice road payday game for MT in my opinion.

[oldguystudent]

This is CUSA football. The money games are better than going in as fodder to Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge every damn year. BYU could actually have a down year or an off game.

[Harry]

If I was a BYU fan I would be scared to death of this game...this is a BIG opportunity for MTSU...

[DeepGreen]

MUTS is starting to remind me of La Tech. They take on "winnable" games, and yes, a lot of times the Dawgs pull out a win.

[Harry]

These are the types of games I wish we could land as opposed to LSU Georgia etc... I wonder how much BYU is paying them for this?

2013 BYU Football Schedule
Date Opponent
Aug. 31 at Virginia
Sept. 7 Texas
Sept. 14 BYE
Sept. 21 Utah
Sept. 27 Middle Tennessee State
Oct. 4 at Utah State
Oct. 12 Georgia Tech
Oct. 19 at Houston
Oct. 26 Boise State
Nov. 2 BYE
Nov. 9 at Wisconsin
Nov. 16 Idaho State
Nov. 23 at Notre Dame
Nov. 30 at Nevada

[NM Green]

Getting BYU early in the season seems to be the recipe for opportunity. Middle has already pulled off nice wins at Ga Tech and others so this could work out well for the Blue Raiders. I do like "Middle" - short sweet and unique in major college football.

Go get one for the C-USA.

GMG

[JesseMartin]

If I was a BYU fan, that wouldn't be the only one that worried me. They only beat Utah State by 3 last year, and USU seems to be getting better all the time. If BYU doesn't improve, I could see them only beating Idaho State and maybe UVA. The rest of those teams look like they will all be very tough games, even for a team that went to the SDCCUPB with a 6-6 record.

[untjim1995]

These are the types of games I wish we could land as opposed to LSU Georgia etc... I wonder how much BYU is paying them for this?

2013 BYU Football Schedule

Date Opponent

Aug. 31 at Virginia

Sept. 7 Texas

Sept. 14 BYE

Sept. 21 Utah

Sept. 27 Middle Tennessee State

Oct. 4 at Utah State

Oct. 12 Georgia Tech

Oct. 19 at Houston

Oct. 26 Boise State

Nov. 2 BYE

Nov. 9 at Wisconsin

Nov. 16 Idaho State

Nov. 23 at Notre Dame

Nov. 30 at Nevada

I've been on this train for a while, concerning BYU. We should schedule them, in a HOME AND HOME series. For one thing, there are a lot of Mormons in the DFW area that always showed up to Amon Carter when they played TCU. Secondly, that is a recognizable name to draw fans to Apogee in OOC play. Lastly, they are beatable.

Alas, don't worry about this type of team for OOC home-and-home scheduling here at good ol' UNT. I'm sure we would be rather play for pay at Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas, A&M, OU, LSU, etc...Plus, we'd probably schedule a two-for-none series at BYU, like we did with Iowa, even though we were told Apogee would bring in some better OOC opponents. So far, I've seen Apogee bring us UH, Indiana, Texas Southern, Idaho, and Ball State, as well as big future opponents in SMU and Army. I don't blame anyone for this, except myself for believing that we would see teams like BYU, Tech, Baylor, Iowa, Kansas, MIssouri, and others like them to be OOC opponents. I should've known that Texas Southern and Idaho would be the types of teams that we would schedule as home games, even though ULM hosts Baylor at their below-high school level stadium and Texas State can get Tech at home in their stadium that hasn't even expanded yet. Again, its really my fault for believing anything different would occur up there with a new stadium.

[JesseMartin]

I've been on this train for a while, concerning BYU. We should schedule them, in a HOME AND HOME series. For one thing, there are a lot of Mormons in the DFW area that always showed up to Amon Carter when they played TCU. Secondly, that is a recognizable name to draw fans to Apogee in OOC play. Lastly, they are beatable.

Alas, don't worry about this type of team for OOC home-and-home scheduling here at good ol' UNT. I'm sure we would be rather play for pay at Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas, A&M, OU, LSU, etc...Plus, we'd probably schedule a two-for-none series at BYU, like we did with Iowa, even though we were told Apogee would bring in some better OOC opponents. So far, I've seen Apogee bring us UH, Indiana, Texas Southern, Idaho, and Ball State, as well as big future opponents in SMU and Army. I don't blame anyone for this, except myself for believing that we would see teams like BYU, Tech, Baylor, Iowa, Kansas, MIssouri, and others like them to be OOC opponents. I should've known that Texas Southern and Idaho would be the types of teams that we would schedule as home games, even though ULM hosts Baylor at their below-high school level stadium and Texas State can get Tech at home in their stadium that hasn't even expanded yet. Again, its really my fault for believing anything different would occur up there with a new stadium.

I agree that the caliber of opponents haven't been as exciting as we'd hoped, but to me it seems to be a matter of timing. We got Apogee, then a couple of years later we move up to C-USA...now, if it had been reversed (move up first, then open the stadium), I think we would have seen some bigger names come in sooner. After a couple of years in the new conference, having already established the stadium, I think we will get a lot more offers. So many schools have either started planning unofficial schedules or started negotiating to put something together tentatively years in advance, it would have been unrealistic to expect a bunch of them to just scrap all of that and start over to come to Denton. I suspect that within a couple of years you will see some of them start to change their schedules (especially if conference realignment continues, which in the case of getting quality opponents to Apogee may actually help us a bit). In this case, I don't think it's the usual "give us time to grow" excuse, I think it's just a matter of logistics and timing.