I generally agree with you. I respect derm, and understand the point he's making, but I think he overstates it a little. Maybe not for him personally, but for the normal fan. Generally we're talking about a shift of just a few games to make a pretty decent difference. I would gladly take a mid-week home and home with Baylor/Rice/DBU/Texas over 2 games at home with UT-RGV or PVAMU. If you do that 2x a year then you're losing 2 home games mid-week. But 2 games versus Baylor is very different from an RPI than playing Prairie View. We have at least FIVE games against 230+ RPI teams this year and we KNEW going into the season that every single one of them would be that bad. Cut that from 5 to 3. Replace those 2 with a home and home with Baylor (#14), Houston (#24), DBU (#48), TCU (#9), Texas (#26), Rice (#78), hell even Sam Houston (#82). Those games are all conveniently located and would be a nice RPI boost. Yes, you're more likely to lose them but that is a chance you take. When you lose to one of the terrible teams (which we've done on more than one occasions) it's a real killer. If you dump PVAMU and Incarnate Word and replace that with a Home/Home with Baylor then Season ticket holders have lost A GRAND TOTAL OF ONE GAME. And they've gained a mid-week home game against a major conference team with (probably) historic rivalry implications. I don't know a ticket holder in their right mind that wouldn't trade a 2-fer of UT-RGV for a home and home with a former SWC/BigXII rival.
Then I think we need to tweak ONE of our four pre-conference series.
Historically we've looked for 3 home series and 1 road/neutral site series. The formula for that has been something like:
1) Home - dumpster fire
2) Home - West Coast (another home dumpster fire if it's the @ West Coast rotation)
3) Away - West Coast OR Neutral Site Tourney
4) Home - trash can fire (not good, but not as terrible as weeks 1/2)
2017: 1) Bowling Green; 2) Pepperdine; 3) MinuteMaid; 4) Brown
2016: 1) Hofstra; 2) @ Pepperdine; 3) Yale; 4) Fresno
2015: 1) Holy Cross; 2) PennSt; 3) Dartmouth; 4) MinuteMaid
2014: 1) Northeastern; 2) Sacramento St; 3) @ Fresno; 4) LaTech
2013: 1) UI-C; 2) Pepperdine; 3) Minute Maid; 4) @ Fullerton
2012: 1) UI-C; 2) Holy Cross; 3) Michigan St; 4) Fullerton
I went back to 2012 to make sure I included Fullerton. Those Fullerton teams were ranked #8/11 in back to back years. That is a pretty big outlier in our scheduling and, I would guess, was scheduled before our move to the SEC.
First, I think we should beef up that West Coast Home/Home. Play it the 2nd week (if home/MinuteMaid year) or 3rd week (when @ Cali). But make it a real team. UCLA, Fullerton, Oregon, OregonSt.
To get a home series without a return trip almost guarantees you have to go North to find a team. So instead of going Ivy League, get a Big10 team. You don't have to get Ohio State, but for goodness sake don't go get a perennial bottom of the barrel Colonial, Horizon, or Big Sky team either. If you can trade 3 home games against #230 for 3 games against #150 that is a help. Then dump the absolute dregs of the Texas scene (PVAMU, Incarnate Word, Abilene Christian) and schedule that home and home against a (traditionally) Top50 Texas team.
Some years you're going to play the game and get hosed. When we scheduled Rice for '17, no one expected their numbers to be terrible... oh well, you win some, you lose some. But if you schedule a team that is historically terrible you can't be surprised when they turn out to be an RPI killer. You schedule with historical knowledge and hope for the best. I think Pepperdine is proving that they are falling into that 'bad' category more often than not.
My ideal schedule would be something like:
Week 1 - HOME - I don't care. Midlothian Middle School. Score a million runs and let Jace get an at bat in the 8th inning of Game 3.
Week 2 - HOME - Upper end of a bad league. St. John, Seton Hall, Kent State something like that.
Week 3 - AWAY/NEUTRAL - @ West Coast (Upper 1/2 Pac 12 or Big West team) or @ Minute Maid
Week 4 - HOME - Nebraska/Indiana/Maryland. A good team. Probably an annual conference contender in a major (but not elite) conference.