Weird AAC scheduling raises eyebrows

If you get the feeling that there are peculiarities concerning the 2013-2014 AAC Men's Basketball schedule you aren't the only one. In the last 38 years since Louisville entered the Missouri Valley Conference in 1975, I cannot remember the team having an eight-day period between conference games. And I certainly cannot remember weekends in January and February when the Cards didn't have a league game.

But that's the situation with Louisville's first - and last - season in the American Athletic Conference (thank goodness). UofL was scheduled to have two eight-day periods without a game, but they ended up with one eight-day break and another nine-day break after the Temple game was delayed.

Louisville will play three games in 20 days from January 23 to February 12. Hardly enough to keep the team sharp.

Compare that to January 9-January 22 when they played five games in 13 days and it makes you scratch your head.

You have to wonder who or what does the scheduling for this league. It must be a computer since no human could be that insensitive to the needs of a college basketball team, or could they?

In comparison, no other AAC team has two eight-day droughts. Houston has one nine-day hiatus and USF has one eight-day. To make matters worse Louisville has only two home games on Saturday, a preferred day for college basketball.

Do I think there's a conspiracy against the Cards by a resentful AAC that the Cards are leaving for bigger and better things? Welllll…let's just say that the football team had the unusual occurrence of having a league game on Saturday and a league game the following Thursday night as did their league opponent, Rutgers. Which speaks more to a lack of knowledge of college football and how long it takes to prepare for a game, or does it?

This mess of a schedule coupled with the fact that Louisville isn't invited to all AAC league meetings, and Cardinal fans have to wonder if somebody else doesn't think the Cards are a "red-headed step-child".

It seems that a conference would embrace one of the best athletic departments in the country if only for one year. But it doesn't matter. This summer the Cards will finally end the conference odyssey they have traveled for the past hundred years. The ACC promised land awaits.