In retrospect, the open week couldn’t have come at a better time given the devastation in Florida from hurricane Michael. If you remember last years, hurricanes had the early season in turmoil with all of the cancellations and/or postponements of games!
I have not heard of any changes in the schedule, and it appears that things will be a go this Saturday against Wake Forest. With the season half over there are still many questions. In reality, the first half of the season was supposed to be the easiest portion of the schedule.
As Florida State tries to keep several streaks alive, this is what they face. At home on 10/20 Wake Forest, 10/27 Clemson, 11/17 Boston College, and 11/24 Florida. They travel in consecutive weeks on 11/3 NC State and 11/10 at Notre Dame.
At risk for the Noles is a bowl streak dating back to 1982 and winning seasons since 1977. Once again the last Seminole team not going to a bowl was the 1981 squad that finished 6-5 and was lead by MTSU head coach Rick Stockstill at QB. The last losing season, 1976, was the legendary Bobby Bowden’s first season as FSU head coach.
Thinking of the bowl situation, this will be an interesting scenario for the Music City Bowl. Of course, there will always be an SEC team. What will be interesting will be who will come from the ACC/BIG/Notre Dame alliance. In the first two years of the current agreement, Notre Dame beat LSU and Louisville triumphed over Texas A&M. The next two years had the BIG vs. the SEC with Tennessee besting Nebraska in 2016 and Northwestern over Kentucky last year.
If that pattern continues, an ACC team should be in the mix for this year’s game.
The only current ACC teams that have not appeared are Duke, Miami, and Pittsburgh. Of note here, Virginia Tech and Syracuse played as representatives of the old Big East and Virginia was an at-large team when the SEC could not fill all of their bowl slots at the conclusion of the 1995 season. Ironically, all three of those teams were victorious with Virginia Tech slamming Alabama 38-7 in the inaugural game at Vanderbilt in 1998. Syracuse was the first team to play in the new stadium, Adelphia Coliseum and bested Kentucky 20-13. Virginia was the winner over Minnesota 34-31 in the last year of the original contract with the Big 10.
I for one would enjoy seeing a Duke team lead by David Cutcliffe make an appearance in this years game.
