No one wants to go on the road. If you go to ESPN, and look at the records of the teams in the top 12-15 leagues, what you see is 9-3, 8-2 Home, 1-1Road. All of the teams want to load up on home games. If you look to do a home and away, it will generally be against a team at your exact level. Very few P5 teams would be willing to play at Duquesne, and nearly all that would will insist that the game be played at the Consol. If the Dukes would become a consistent power in the A10, the quality of potential opponents would rise, and we could then get the powers from leagues similar to the A10, and some mid level P5 teams. No elite teams will ever come here unless we became what we were in the 1950s. Pitt, and WVU have been very successful lately, but there is still a limit to the level of team they can get to come in. Duke goes on the road to play Kentucky, not S. Carolina, or Iowa. Those conference challenge things do help some P5 schools get decent home games, but usually they set them up so that the elite play each other, the middling teams play other middling teams, and the dreck are left playing the dreck. I'd like to see the A10 do something with the AAC, or MWC.

Simms wrote:

This is one of the reasons that being in the A10 is such a blessing.  We don't really need to go on the road too much to play difficult match ups because our conference typically gets at least 3 bids.  

The better your league, the more big time home games you get automatically. This is why most P5 teams have no need to go on the road ooc.
 

I'd prefer Big East vs A10 since the BE is now all Catholic schools with similar situations to us.  

Methinks an ideal situation, pre-season, would be to go back to the future and have Dave Harper try to negotiate Duquesne, Pitt, West Virginia and Penn State in the old Steel Bowl format with the winners playing for the Steel Bowl.  The match-ups could be rotated annually.  I can't envision that this would not be a sellout event at the Consol where everyone makes some $$$ and has two quality opponents on an annual basis. I think this is a doable deal.

I think we could easily get home and home series with teams from American, MAC, Horizon, Mountain West, and West Coast Athletic Conference.  Why not focus on those conferences first?

I'd avoid MAC teams. They tend to be the classic "high risk, low reward" type games. I'd much prefer games vs the American, MWC, and WCC. I'd try to get the elite of the Horizon, but not the dregs. If we can establish ourselves near the top of the league, we might be able to schedule some of the lesser BE teams, but we'd have to be really good before they'd consider playing us.
I think it's ok to whore ourselves out for one game, but the question is, should it be against a Georgia Tech type team that we should be able to hang with, or an elite team that we're not going to beat, but that would give our sos a boost, and would be exciting for the fans, and players, especially if we could make them work hard for the win?