Item: The ACC released the 2015 football schedule for all 14 teams on Thursday, and filling in the dates that had been previously announced reveals that the Orange won’t have a road game until week six – October 10, and it marks the first time the first four games have been played at home in 80 years (1935).
Talk about the perfect opportunity to get off to a great start, not to mention treading on the doorstep of the much talked about, and rarely achieved, 3-0 start, something last year’s team couldn’t attain falling to Maryland in the Dome, and something no Syracuse squad has accomplished since 1991, next season’s third group under Scott Shafer is home for the entire month of September, then has a week off, before finishing the non-league portion of the slate with its first road game against former Big East rival South Florida, the first of a home-and-home series with the Bulls which concludes in the Dome in 2016.
Before that first road trip to Tampa, it’s a perfect set-up to the much anticipated rare visit of a SEC team in the Dome when LSU comes to town September 26, preceded by the FCS season opener with Rhode Island, then the ACC opener in the Dome against the only conference team the Orange defeated last season, Wake Forest, followed by a continuation of the series with another of the three teams SU defeated in 2014, Central Michigan, before the Bengal Tigers play in the northeast for the first time since 1947 (at Boston College).
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The flip side is the second half of the season and it’s a tad more road heavy. There’s only one home game in October against Pittsburgh, as the ACC rightfully broke up the pairing of longtime eastern rivals Pitt and Boston College who were in the same home/away cycle with Syracuse. With B.C. and SU matched up by the conference to play each year in the regular season finale, it made sense to separate the Panthers so the ‘Cuse wouldn’t end a particular season with two home games or two road games in alternate years.
Clemson is the other game home game on November 14, and this year’s rotating crossover game with a Coastal Division team is against Virginia in Charlottesville on October 17.
The 2015 Syracuse football schedule (all times to be determined/home games in CAPS):
- September 5 RHODE ISLAND
- September 12 WAKE FOREST
- September 19 CENTRAL MICHIGAN
- September 26 LSU
- October 3 No Game
- October 10 at South Florida
- October 17 at Virginia
- October 24 PITTSBURGH
- October 31 at Florida State
- November 7 at Louisville
- November 14 CLEMSON
- November 21 at North Carolina State
- November 28 BOSTON COLLEGE
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