Saturday, August 29, 2020

BC finally locks in its 2020 schedule

Football scheduling is complicated under normal seasons. It is uncharted territory in 2020. But after lots of weeks of scrambling, BC finalized its lone non-conference game and will host Texas State on September 26. Yes, Texas State. As for the how and why...

Despite many BC fans finding the "+1" pointless, BC had to schedule someone. The conference owes ESPN a certain amount of inventory and the +1 is part of that deal. The original intent of the +1 was to preserve the traditional non-conference rivalry games. Obviously the SEC didn't find those games as critical, yet the ACC stuck with their model (because of TV money). It wasn't going to be a problem until numerous conferences and independents decided to cancel their fall season.

After Ohio and the MAC shutdown their season, BC's original intent was to schedule someone close, cheap and easy. UConn and UMass were floated most often and made sense. Both scrapped their season. There were plenty of other options, but it suddenly became very expensive and very risky. Good teams wanted the game but at a high price. With Alumni empty, BC wasn't going to pay over the top to have a tough mid-major give us a handful. Lots of people hoped for Army, but Army had its pick of who to play and will actually play 12 games this year.

That left lots of fringe FBS programs as targets. BC landed on Texas State. They were available on our desired date, they are not strong (3-9 last year) and should provide a nice early teaching moment for Hafley.

Will fans be excited about this one? No, but they can't come anyway. This is a made for TV tune up and will hopefully be just what BC needs at the time. Under normal circumstances I would be livid about this type of game. This year it make all the sense in the world and was a good early decision by Pat Kraft.