Breaking: Revised Pac-12 Football Schedule Released

There are still plenty of steps that have to happen for the Pac-12 to get to their football schedule but they’ve agreed on the first one. The Pac-12 today released their initial conference-only schedule with games slated to start on September 26th. Instead of starting the year off against Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan squad they’ll play against his former team in the Stanford Cardinal.

We all knew it was too good to be true when Washington had a perfect home/away every other balance to their initial schedule and that’s been taken away here. The Huskies will have a front-loaded home slate with only one road game prior to Halloween but would have to play 3 of the final 4 away.

It’s weird to look at a schedule release and have to factor in that games played earlier in the year may have a better chance of actually occurring. But that’s where we are these days so a schedule that includes both Arizona and Oregon State in the first four with three of them coming at home is good news for the Huskies to finish with a good record if this experiment gets called off in the middle. What most would consider to be the 3 hardest games on the schedule all take place in the final 6 weeks.

Just because there’s likely to be no fans doesn’t mean we’re done with non-Saturday contests. Washington’s home game against Colorado is scheduled for a Friday night and the conference left alone the traditional Black Friday Apple Cup. However, given the shift back to the season it means that contest is no longer the season finale. Instead, if everything goes as well as a Husky fan could want it means the final game against USC could be a part 1 to determine who gets to host the rematch 2 weeks later in the Pac-12 title game.

Oh yeah. And that Oregon game which was supposed to be the Dawgs’ Pac-12 opener? It’s now going to take place on Halloween night. Fitting. Oh, and the Ducks get a bye before they host Washington because of course they do.

As for fall camp, it has the chance to begin on August 17th, which would be about 10 days later than the normal schedule, depending upon the conditions around COVID-19 going on in each home city. The conference is not providing any kind of guidance about whether fans in any volume will be allowed into games and are deferring to the local public health officials.

Will any of this work? Given Larry Scott’s track record this may be better than if he said he was fully confident.