Every Power Five College Football Conference Now Has a Plan in Place
Took long enough, but the Big 12 finally got together and agreed on a plan for the 2020 football season.
The league will play a nine-game conference schedule and allow one out-of-conference game, to bring the total for each team to 10 games.
The start of conference play will be solidified in the coming weeks, with an anticipated start sometime in mid-to-late September. The league still expects to play its nonconference games before the start of league play, according to a release.
The model gives the Big 12 the flexibility to move back the Big 12 Dr Pepper Championship game to Dec. 12 or 19.
With that, the major players in division one college football are set to move forward in the following way:
- Big 12: nine game conference-schedule, plus one OOC game
- ACC: 10 conference games (including independent Notre Dame), plus one OOC game
- SEC: conference games only (10 total)
- Big 10: conference games only, though we haven’t been given full details yet
- Pac 12: conference games only (10 total)
On the surface, it seems like you’d be able to work some ACC/Big 12 non-conference games here, but that won’t be possible because the ACC is mandating that the OOC opponent reside in its member school’s home state. Additionally, the Big 12 wants their non-conference games to be played as home games for their teams, so we can rule out WVU/Pitt and any other Big 12/ACC matchup, since there’s no geographic overlap.
You could, theoretically, have Pitt play at home against Temple, depending on what the AAC decides to do. The Big 12’s Texas schools have plenty of options, as do Florida State and the Virginia teams, but there might be some boring and wonky OOC scrambles here, just to get somebody on the schedule.
Weird times for college football, but hopefully it’ll be played in 2020.
