STILL EYEING 12
UCF AD optimistic Knights can play full schedule this season
UCF athletics director Danny White remains optimistic the Knights can play a full 12-game football schedule this season despite uncertainty surrounding their nonconference matchups against North Carolina and Georgia Tech.
“I know the ACC is still trying to figure things out and I expect we’ll learn something pretty quick as they finalize their schedule,” White told reporters during a videoconference Wednesday afternoon following the American Athletic Conference announcement that schools would play eight conference games and as many as four nonconference matchups.
White, who said he was in favor of the model, believes there’s a good chance UCF could salvage its road contest against Georgia Tech.
“I’m very optimistic about the Georgia Tech game,” White said. “I think the way our fans travel and with a lower capacity situation, which is what we’re looking at, we’re an attractive home game for them.”
A game against North Carolina doesn’t appear as likely.
The ACC opted for an 11-game model that features 10 conference games with one nonconference opponent, but that game must be played at home. The Tar Heels were to open the season in Orlando on Friday, Sept. 4.
White isn’t planning on a road trip to North Carolina.
“We have a contract with North Carolina to play at home and we’re not in a position to reduce the number of home games,” said White. “We’ll have to work through that.”
UCF hopes it can keep its home game against Florida A&M as the Rattlers work toward playing as an independent this season to work around the MEAC postponing all fall sports. FAMU is moving to the SWAC next year, making briefly going independent from its current conference a little easier.
“We’re still talking with FAMU and I think they’ve done a great job reaching out to a lot of schools to put a schedule together and we’re hoping to play that game on Nov. 7,” White said.
FIU is the only nonconference game on UCF’s schedule that has not been impacted by coronavirus adjustments.
UCF has developed several models in case some of their nonconference games fall through.
“It’s a tricky proposition because what you schedule this year could have an impact on another year,” said White. “It’s
hard to set up a home-and-home, for example, when the home game is this year in front of a reduced capacity crowd, a game that we really can’t monetize and then you have a road game in the future that is an outlier.
“It’s complicated and we’re working on a bunch of different scenarios.”
White also had to be patient while other conferences decided how to handle schedules.
“It’s been tough, obviously,” he said. “We’re in an unprecedented situation, so we’re trying to be understanding to that. It’s tough for our student-athletes to come in every day and work out with face masks on. It’s challenging for everybody. I get why there’s been a void of information. I wish that we were more coordinated in college football and that we had better communication.”
UCF can begin competition on Sept. 19, with each school sticking with its original eight conference games on its originally scheduled dates.
The AAC Championship Game will be played on Dec. 5, Dec. 12 or Dec. 19 at the stadium of the regularseason champions. A decision regarding the date of the game will be made no earlier than Nov. 1.
The Power 5 conferences recently announced alterations to their schedules, with the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC opting for conference-only schedules while the ACC and Big 12 chose to go with one nonconference matchup.
The leagues stated the revised schedules allow some flexibility to delay or reschedule games in the event of spikes in the COVID-19 cases. But conferences also are aligning their schedules to assure they deliver inventory that fulfills their lucrative media-rights contracts. The TV revenue would soften the blow from little to no home attendance revenue expected in 2020.
In the case of the Big 12, the league must supply 57 games per season to its television partners. The decision to go with nine conference games plus a nonconference matchup supplies 55 games for TV partners, according to Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
If the Big 12 had chosen to go with a conference-only schedule, that would have supplied just 45 games, which would have cost the league $35 million.
It’s a similar situation for the AAC, which kicked off its new 12-year television rights deal with ESPN in July. The league needs inventory and the revised football schedule supplies the flexibility to give the network enough games for both its linear networks and its streaming site, ESPN+.
AAC commissioner Mike Aresco told the Orlando Sentinel in late May that the league preferred to play 12 games, citing the importance of several of its high-profile nonconference matchups, including TCUSMU, Army-Navy and USF-Texas. But the league had prepared several models, including a 10-game conference-only schedule and a hybrid schedule with eight conference games and two non-conference matchups.