Syracuse Football: It’s time for College GameDay to come for Clemson

It’s finally time for College GameDay to come to Syracuse. Why not when Clemson comes to play the Syracuse football squad in Week 3?

The 2019 Syracuse football schedule was released earlier this week and we gave our reaction, nuggets, and analysis here. But the first thing our (and most Orange fans) eyes looked for is that game vs Clemson.

We hope College GameDay was thinking the same thing.

Over the last two years, Syracuse and Clemson have played in two instant classics at the Carrier Dome and at Death Valley.

The rematch in the Carrier Dome this Fall will be one of the premiere matchups on the slate in Week 3 of college football (Saturday September 14th), but will it be the best? We cross analyzed every conference in college football and looked at their schedules and pulled out all the best games that will be on the same day as Clemson vs Syracuse to understand who the Orange will be competing against, here’s what we found:

• NC State at West Virginia
  • This is the best game on the NC State schedule. This game was supposed to happen in 2018, but mother nature had different plans. West Virginia appears to be in rebuild mode without their star quarterback (Will Grier) and with head coach Dana Holgorsen gone to Houston.
• Florida State at Virginia
  • “As the result of conference expansion, FSU has met Virginia just three times since 2006 and hasn’t played in Charlottesville since 2010. When the Seminoles make their return this fall, they’ll find a Cavaliers program that seems to be on the upswing under coach Bronco Mendenhall. Not only did UVA post an 8-5 record that matched its best output in seven years, but it also closed its campaign with a 28-0 thumping of South Carolina in the Belk Bowl”, per Seminoles.com.
• Florida at Kentucky
  • SEC opener for Florida when they travel on the road to play Kentucky. The Wildcats were the Cinderella story of college football in 2018 finishing with a 10-3 record and ended with a massive win over Penn State 27-24 in the Citrus Bowl.
• Oklahoma at UCLA
  • “Oklahoma beat UCLA badly in 2018, and this game will be a huge measuring stick to see where the Bruins are in Year 2 under Chip Kelly”, per ESPN.
• Pitt at Penn State
  • “This is the last scheduled meeting between the two rivals, so you can bet Pitt is going to want to play a little bit better than it did in 2018, when it lost 51-6 at home to the Nittany Lions,” per ESPN.
• Arizona State at Michigan State
  • “Arizona State pulled off one of the biggest nonconference upsets a year ago with a field goal as time expired to beat Michigan State. Bet the Spartans have a little extra juice for this one,” per ESPN.
• Stanford at UCF
  • “LSU broke UCF’s 25-game winning streak in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl, but there is one hard truth that remains unchanged: For UCF to have any shot at making the top four, it must go undefeated and have impressive nonconference wins to boot. On paper, Stanford is the best nonconference opponent UCF has on its 2019 schedule (Pitt is the other Power 5 nonconference game). If UCF loses either game, the playoff talk will end quickly,” per ESPN.

Could Syracuse get gypped again by UCF?

That’s a very legitimate question when looking at the Week 3 slate in college football. Analyzing the slate of games above the only one that seems to be heavily in the conversation with Syracuse, would be Stanford at UCF.

If you remember back to last season, Syracuse played Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium in what appeared to be clearly the best game of the college football season that week, but instead College GameDay opted for the warmer temperatures and the collegiate atmosphere in the UCF vs Cincinnati game.

But a couple of things we know about College GameDay:

• They don’t always pick the best game. College GameDay likes to visit the week’s biggest storyline.
  • While I’d argue a battle between the only two top-15 teams playing in Week 11 was a bigger storyline, I digress.
  • A whack against Syracuse in the Notre Dame game in 2018 was the fact it was played at Yankee Stadium. The lack of a college football atmosphere and both schools being well more than a hour away also contributed.

"“I think, for sure, one of the things is College GameDay feeds off being on a college campus a little bit,” Syracuse alum Mike Tirico revealed in a piece featured on Syracuse.com. “Students are there at 9 in the morning with the signs and all that. I can’t speak for (ESPN) but I don’t know how you replicate that in the Bronx when neither campus is within an hour or two of where the game is. I’m sure that was a part of it.”"

• “Outside of Top 10 matchups, the program has almost always avoided broadcasting games featuring the same conference on back-to-back weekends”, per Syracuse.com. The week prior to Syracuse vs Notre Dame was Boston College vs Florida State.
  • Looking at the slate for 2019 in Week 2 for the ACC (a week prior to the Syracuse vs Clemson game) it doesn’t appear there are any games that would warrant College GameDay coverage.
• Some people have suggested that because the game wasn’t on their network, they wouldn’t promote it. According to research that isn’t actually true, “Six of the 13 GameDay locations that have been broadcast or announced in 2018 have been at games broadcast by NBC, CBS or FOX”, per Chris Carlson of Syracuse.com.

So who should get College GameDay in Week 3 of 2019?

According to Andrea Adelson of ESPN, the Stanford vs UCF game is the eighth most anticipated game of the 2019 college football season when you think about the College Football Playoff implications. This is also the only game in the top-10 of her rankings that is on the same date as Syracuse vs Clemson which is September 14th, (three others are in the honorable mention category: Arizona State vs Michigan State, Oklahoma vs UCLA, and Pitt vs Penn State).

Andrea isn’t the only one that puts this game in high regard: NCAA.com had this game listed in their top-15 games that will impact the College Football Playoff race. But here’s my take, UCF stole the experience last season, now it’s Syracuse’s turn. They check off all the boxes we discussed above and this should be a heavyweight matchup between two undefeated ranked ACC foes.

On a quick side note, in hindsight I’m sure glad Syracuse was overlooked for this experience last season. Imagine this, if College GameDay actually would’ve showed up for Syracuse and Notre Dame and the game played out the exact way it did, how jazzed would College GameDay feel about a 36-3 blowout and coming back again in the near future? Probably not very good.

2019 is the perfect time for College GameDay to grace the Syracuse campus for the first time in history. Only 10 other Power-Five schools haven’t hosted College GameDay: “Cal, Duke, Illinois, Iowa State, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Rutgers, Virginia and Wake Forest”, per Syracuse.com.