New home opener, BYU date added
UTSA football landed a new home opener and reportedly added a second nonconference contest Thursday, moving closer to rebuilding a 12-game schedule that was thrown into flux by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Roadrunners announced a matchup against Stephen F. Austin, an FCS school in the Southland Conference, for Sept. 19 in the Alamodome. The matchup stands as UTSA’S home opener, with the Roadrunners’ first game of 2020 scheduled for Sept. 12 at Texas State.
UTSA also picked up a nonconference game against BYU set for Oct. 10 at Lavell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah, according to a report from Stadium’s Brett Mcmurphy.
The two matchups bring UTSA’S schedule to 11 games. The program’s season-opener Sept. 5 at LSU was canceled when the SEC switched to a conferenceonly schedule, a Sept. 19 home
matchup against Grambling State was erased when the SWAC postponed its season to the spring and an Oct. 17 home date against Old Dominion was slashed when it canceled fall athletics.
UTSA’S fourth nonconference game is a home matchup against Memphis, the defending American Athletic Conference champion, on Sept. 26.
Conference USA is expected to announce that teams in the West division, which includes UTSA, will still play eight league contests this year despite Old Dominion’s decision to cancel fall athletics, per Stadium’s report. UTSA has seven conference contests on the current calendar, facing the other six schools in the West as well as Florida Atlantic from the East.
UTSA and Stephen F. Austin have no previous meetings. The Lumberjacks have not had a winning season since 2014, finishing 3-9 last year.
The Southland Conference postponed all fall league athletic contests Aug. 13 but left schools the option to play “limited fall competition” outside the conference. The only other date on Stephen F. Austin’s schedule is Sept. 26 at SMU.
First-year UTSA coach Jeff Traylor played football as a walkon at Stephen F. Austin, earning an undergraduate degree in 1990 and completing a master’s in 2002.
BYU has also been working to overhaul its schedule, with only two of the 12 games on its original slate remaining. BYU dropped three contests against Pac-12 opponents, two dates against Big Ten schools, three matchups against teams in the Mountain West and a game against a MidAmerican Conference team when those leagues postponed fall athletics. BYU also lost a matchup against SEC member Missouri.
The Cougars are one of seven FBS independents, and the matchup against UTSA would bring the program’s fall 2020 slate to six games.
BYU, which has never faced UTSA, has advanced to bowl games in 14 of the past 15 years. The Cougars finished 7-6 last season, losing 38-34 to Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl.
While conferences across the country have postponed games or altered schedules in response to the pandemic, Conference USA has stayed on course. The league announced Aug. 7 — before Old Dominion’s decision to cancel fall athletics — that league teams will play eight conference games as scheduled. The league also gave programs the flexibility to play up to four nonconference dates “at the discretion of the individual schools.”
The only other announcement about the state of the fall season came Aug. 12, when the league said it was continuing “robust discussion with medical experts” on “myocarditis, mental health and enhanced testing protocols.”