COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMES, LISTED IN ORDER, WITH DATES AND LOCATIONS
Happy CUSA Schedule Release Day to all who celebrate. We know next-to-nothing about what will happen on the field this fall, when almost every team either welcomes a new coach, breaks in a new roster, or - in the case of Missouri State and Delaware - is new to the conference altogether.
Needless to say, there are a whole lot of puzzle pieces to jam together. Earlier this afternoon, CUSA was at least kind enough to give us what the full picture looks like, in the form of the lovely composite schedule. We can start talking about actual games:
Initial reaction: That’s a friendly draw for Jerry Mack’s first season. If you look at schedules trying to find the best chance at racking up wins, CUSA gave the new-look Owls a more manageable ride in Year 2. The conference should be wide open after all that turnover, and two of the toughest matchups - Liberty and Jacksonville State - are on the road, leaving the home conference slate for games where the talent level is more equal.
Look at who’s not on the schedule: The Owls will miss CUSA finalist Western Kentucky entirely this season. Out of the two newcomers to the league, they’ll also avoid Delaware, which appears as though they’ll be more competitive right away than Missouri State. None of the weekday games in October come after a quick turnaround, with two of the three at Fifth Third Stadium. The only road midweek game takes the Owls down to FIU, where you should never expect much from the crowd at Pitbull Stadium - even with the potential novelty of Vice Night.
Assuming that Liberty/Jax State are KSU’s automatic opponents for the CUSA braintrust, that eight-game league slate isn’t far off from what Mack would draw up if you let him write the schedule himself.
What’s the Vegas win total? You’d have to be clinically insane to predict anything before the Owls even hit spring practice, much less wager with your hard-earned money. If the number for last year was 2.5, I do think our friends in the desert (or offshore) will toss out something like a 4.5 when the time comes to release CUSA totals. That’s less of an Owls endorsement and more just playing the numbers game with how the schedule breaks. File that thought away, I guess.
Most important stretch: MTSU, Louisiana Tech, @ FIU. Sure, it’s probably cheating to pick a three-game, five-week run that covers a quarter of the season. That month or so will define the season, though. If you game out all 14 million outcomes like Dr. Strange in Infinity War, every path that feels like a step in the right direction hinges on a smooth start to CUSA play.
MTSU, on its own, stands out to me as the biggest game of the season, as dumb as that may sound to say in February. Mack gets a chance for a proof of concept to kick off the conference schedule at home against a team that joined the Owls in the CUSA basement last year. The bonus for the staff will be the extra rest before Louisiana Tech and FIU. That’s a welcome sight on the schedule when the Owls think about installing new systems on both sides of the ball.
Best road trip: Wake Forest - Friday, August 29. This one hasn’t changed with the release of the conference schedule. I’m a huge mark for P4 buy games and the state of North Carolina in general, so I circled the Winston-Salem visit on my calendar as soon as KSU’s announcement went out. Close runner-up: Jacksonville State in mid-November. We don’t have a real rivalry - at least not yet - but you can’t beat getting to a CUSA road game in less than two hours. Bonus points for the weather.
Most exciting, for football reasons: UTEP at Kennesaw, Oct. 28. Before the Miners depart to the Mountain West, Scotty Walden’s “Blue Blaze” offense meets Mack’s Veer and Hoot in what might be the fastest-paced game in college football this fall. Will either team play with a ton of control? That’s not for me to say. Think of it like a NASCAR road course: They’ll go really fast for brief stretches, then crash. Must-watch TV for the national audience on a Tuesday night, especially if it’s anywhere close to as chaotic as last year’s 2OT matchup in the Sun Bowl.
Worst scheduling decision: Counter-programming Alabama-Georgia with a home game. Putting Kennesaw’s conference opener up against the Crimson Tide’s visit to Athens is an unforced error for a league that typically understands the need to attract viewers in alternate ways. We can’t realistically expect CUSA to factor in every power conference matchup, not when almost the entire league is comprised of the third or fourth college football team on the depth chart in each state. It’s also less of an issue for teams like Jacksonville State and Liberty with more established, self-sufficient fan bases. We’re years away from that being a reality in Kennesaw.
That’s not to say CUSA should run away from most UGA games, or even recognize that Georgia Tech exists. Alabama coming to Athens just feels like one worth scheduling around. You know, this may be a deeper conversation for another day.
Would Brian Bohannon still be the Owls HC right now if he got this exact schedule in 2024? That’s a Finebaum-esque hot take I’m workshopping. Bohannon’s tenure felt doomed anyway, so I’m not sure an extra win or two saves him in the long run. I don’t think I can get there, but it’d definitely fire up the Bo sleeper cell to consider the possibility.
Elsewhere in CUSA:
I loved seeing that the league didn’t punt on Week 0, even if it’s only one game in Sam Houston at WKU. That felt like a missed opportunity last year, along the same lines as the Kennesaw-UGA conversation. The more chances we can make CUSA teams the only game in town on a Saturday, the better.
Adding two extra teams for this year really eases up the workload on filling the October TV inventory and should make for a better viewing experience. Only Sam Houston plays four midweek games, and nobody deals with the Thursday-Tuesday turnaround that caught a couple teams last year.
Most anticipated game elsewhere: Easy call for JSU-Liberty in Week 2. Charles Kelly’s home debut, up against a Liberty team on a revenge tour. Credit to the league office for getting a conference game on the schedule everywhere except Labor Day weekend, when most of us are getting pounded by P4s or paying FCS teams to lose by 35, anyway.
I thought they’d be way nicer to Delaware on the way into the league, yet the Blue Hens miss Kennesaw, NMSU and Missouri State. On the flip side, I figured UTEP would get the toughest draw and some of the most diabolical travel plans in history. Instead, they handed the Miners both newcomers, plus Kennesaw and NMSU out of the returners.