UTSA keeps attention on its next opponent.
During Sunday's team meeting, UTSA coach Jeff Traylor braced the Roadrunners for the speculation sure to swirl around the program this week.
UTSA's matchup against North Texas on Saturday is the final game on the calendar, but the possibility remains for the Roadrunners to play a rescheduled game against Rice, a bowl or even the Conference USA title game.
The league's decision to select its division champions by winning percentage opens the door for questions about fairness between teams with different game totals this season, and the Roadrunners' potential bowl destination is clouded by schedule changes and new rules on eligibility.
Traylor's message to the players was to not worry about any of it and simply “live for the moment.”
“They'll take care of that for us. They'll have that figured out. Our job is to win today,” Traylor said. “None of us know. Any moment we spend talking about it, we're literally wasting time in our minds, because I could be preparing for North Texas.”
UTSA is 4-2 in the league, tied with 2-1 UAB atop the Conference USA West division standings. Louisiana Tech is 3-2, and North Texas is 2-2.
A C-USA spokesperson this week said eligibility to play for the league championship will be decided by winning percentage. To qualify for consideration, a team must play “no less than two fewer conference games than the average number of conference games played by all conference teams.”
With only three potential game weeks left in the season, that average is 4.3. If all 12 remaining games on the C-USA docket are played, the average rises to just
6.2, meaning teams with as few as four conference games would be eligible to play for the championship.
The league included one exception to the policy of selecting by winning percentage: if two teams have the same number of losses and are separated by one win, C-USA will consider those teams tied. For example, 4-2 UTSA and 3-2 Louisiana Tech would be even.
Traylor said the Roadrunners have not spent time mulling the possibilities.
“When you start the season picked dead last and have nobody on the preseason all-conference team, you don't spend a lot of time reading the championship tiebreaker rules,” Traylor
said. “You just don't really think you are going to be in it.”
UAB announced Tuesday that its matchup against Southern Miss scheduled for Friday is canceled due to COVID-19 issues with the Golden Eagles. The Blazers have an open date Dec. 5 and are slated to play Rice on Dec. 12.
A conference spokesperson said additional changes to the schedule “cannot be ruled out,” describing the calendar as “an incredibly fluid situation.”
UTSA's only postponement this year was Nov. 9 against Rice. The Owls have played three games this season and have penciled in rescheduled matchups against Marshall on Dec. 5 and UAB on Dec. 12.
Conference USA has said divi
sion matchups will be a priority in rescheduling, fueling speculation that Rice's matchup against Marshall could be replaced. But the Owls have no way to make up both postponed West matchups, as Rice is yet to play UTSA or Louisiana Tech.
“Common sense would tell me if we were going to have a game, somebody would have already told me so my analysts and graduate assistants could go ahead and get moving on that opponent,” Traylor said. “As of this moment, North Texas is our last game of the year. But this is 2020, so who knows?”
The Roadrunners' bowl fate also remains up in the air. Conference USA announced before the season that it is guaranteed seven bowl appearances through associations with up to 16 different bowls. But the Bahamas Bowl and Hawai'i Bowl have announced their games will not be played this season, leaving the league without two guaranteed selections.
Though UTSA earned its sixth win Saturday to cross the traditional threshold for bowl eligibility, the NCAA decided to waive win requirements for bowl eligibility this season, opening the possibility for a wider pool of teams to be selected.
For their part, the Roadrunners say they've kept focus on Saturday's game against North Texas.
“This year has been crazy, with the coronavirus and everything else,” quarterback Frank Harris said. “You have to anticipate every game is your last game. You have to anticipate every practice is your last practice. Especially this year, we can't take anything for granted.”
Harris, linebacker Charles Wiley and safety Antonio Parks echoed the same message Tuesday. They know the division race is tight because Traylor told them as much Sunday, but they haven't spent time researching different scenarios.
Parks said the team is accepting the possibility that Saturday could be the final game of the season, and Wiley said the Roadrunners are wary of getting their hopes up for opportunities that aren't guaranteed.
“This has been a crazy year altogether,” Wiley said. “It went from us not knowing if we're going to have a season, to not knowing if the next game is going to happen, to not knowing if we're going to go to a bowl game or not. At the end of the day, we just have to do what we can do at the time we can do it.”