Syracuse Football: ACC taking look at league, plus one non-conference

It seems more and more likely that a 2020 campaign for Syracuse football, if it occurs, will only feature nine or 10 games at the most.

Syracuse football and its fellow Atlantic Coast Conference foes are expected to hear from league officials by the end of this month about what the ACC plans to do as it relates to the 2020 season.

However, given the current state of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and numerous other conferences around the country canceling, postponing or shrinking their 2020 fall-sports calendars, the Orange and the rest of the ACC almost certainly will see their football dockets decrease. And that’s if a 2020 campaign transpires at all.

Already, decisions by the Big Ten Conference and the Patriot League have led to the removal of Rutgers and Colgate, respectively, from the Syracuse football non-conference schedule.

CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd is reporting that leaders of the ACC, the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12 Conference are possibly considering a model where teams from their leagues would play a normal conference docket, then add in one non-conference contest.

That would mean nine games for Syracuse football, the rest of the ACC, and the SEC. It would entail 10 encounters for the Big 12, Dodd says.

This type of 2020 format, Dodd notes, would help to keep traditional rivalry games from going away amid the pandemic, whether it’s Florida versus Florida State, Georgia battling Georgia Tech, South Carolina against Clemson, or Kentucky squaring off with Louisville.

The Big Ten and the Pac-12 Conference, as we’ve previously reported, have elected to only compete in league tilts during the 2020 season. If the ACC and the other remaining Power 5 conferences do the same, those aforementioned rivalry duels won’t transpire.

Of course, as it pertains to Syracuse football, this whole rivalry-game issue doesn’t factor into the equation. The Orange’s two remaining non-conference clashes, at least for the moment, are Western Michigan and Liberty.

If the ACC adopts the conference, plus one, format, it’s unclear if Syracuse football would hold on to Western Michigan or Liberty, or perhaps look to find another non-conference opponent.

But what appears way more likely for the ‘Cuse is that it won’t have a full 12-game slate. Take, for example, an announcement that came across on Wednesday from Clemson University President James Clements.

Clements said that Clemson students will begin their semester as scheduled on Aug. 19 with online instruction, and that in-person classes are delayed until Sept. 21.

This could prove the first domino to fall, and if other ACC schools take similar actions to delay in-person instruction, those will be further examples of why a 2020 football stanza seems to hang in the balance.