Ok, but weren't we contractually obligated to a game? Shouldn't we have expected to be put in one, so why didn't we leave the date open?
(Unless you are saying we didn't even have an idea when the game would be. Which is possible)
Well if the poster above is correct that we typically try to maintain a minimum of 3 off days between games at this time of the season. Not knowing when they were planning on scheduling us would have required us to block out a range of dates beginning Monday Nov. 26th (three days prior to first day of games Thurs. Nov. 29th) and running through Tues. Dec. 4th (three days after the last day of games on Sat. Dec. 1st). We'd have to do that and there was still the chance that the Big East could do to us what they did to Pitt and put us on the sidelines this year. The weekend before is Thanksgiving Weekend and probably not optimal for scheduling a home game.
Whether we typically maintain the off day policy or not, you should assume that this is how SU would have to approach scheduling around this event because we knew that if were selected to play we were going to be sent on the road to a, prior to the announcement, unknown destination, which would certainly be a good distance away and quite possibly be a locale that isn't exactly an East coast commuter city (ended up being Fayetteville, AR, could also have been Baton Rouge, LA, Starkesville, MS, Auburn, AL, Columbia, SC, Oxford, MS etc.). The SEC is big time in sports, but all of the Universities are not exactly located in big time metropolitan towns that are easy to get in and out of.
I am not saying that we couldn't have blocked out the time - and we'll probably find out that we did. But, I'd be willing to bet that SU is frustrated by the lack of communication and its impact on other decisions we need to make and using this as a way to try to jab the Big East in the eye a bit.
Not only is this a logistics issue for SU in scheduling, but we also know that JB likes to carefully pick his opponents with the NCAA metrics in mind. Having a road game against a reasonable SEC opponent allows him to do one thing when scheduling other games. Not having that game, or drawing someone like S. Carolina who had a relatively poor RPI, requires him to do something different.
