Jan. 14, 2006
SAN DIEGO - Sean T. Painter (Nevada City)
Mr. Schemmel, I can find nowhere on goaztecs.com, a future football schedule. I know that the Aztecs play some big name opponents in the years to come and it would be nice to know the schedules in advance. I do understand that schedules are subject to change, but if you look on other team's websites, for example the Fresno State Bulldogs, it shows its non-conference schedules for 2006 - 2010. On these games scheduled against San Diego State appear in 2007, 2009 and 2010. Is it possible that the Aztecs future schedules can be posted on goaztecs.com?
Thanks, Go Aztecs.
Sean Painter
Dear Sean,
That is an excellent question, especially since we just made a change in next year's schedule.
First, let's talk about what happened with next year's schedule. Sacramento State, with whom we had a contract to play next September, notified us in October that it was not going to honor the contract. That put us in a very tough spot, and we spent the next few weeks scrambling to find an opponent on such short notice. Almost everyone in the country is scheduled for next year, but we were very fortunate to find an opponent to replace Sacramento State. That will be Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. However Cal Poly could only play us on October 28th (in the middle of our conference season), so were forced to ask the Mountain West Conference to give us that date to play a non-conference game. What that meant is that we will now play our first conference game in early September rather than the typical late September or early October date.
As to future years, we do have tentative schedules in place, but they may very well change, so we do not want to post them on our website quite yet. Coach Long and I have not had an opportunity yet to sit down and discuss future schedules, but we will do that soon and make some decisions about those future schedules.
I can tell you this. We have no contract to play Fresno State in any future years. I'm not sure why those are on its website. The Fresno State Athletic Director Tom Boeh and I have talked, but there are no agreements in place.
Hope that helps and I apologize for the long delay since my last response. We have been a bit busy, but with the results we are awfully excited about.
GO AZTECS!