What were slim pickins to fill the two open spots on the 2012 Syracuse Orange football schedule get even more slim with the news that Florida State has filled its schedule, with a second FCS team no less.

Depending on who you ask (NationalChamps.net, Matt's blog), here's the available pool of FBS schools as of right now:

Louisiana-Lafayette, Middle Tennessee, Boise St., Georgia Tech, Hawai'i, Missouri, Nevada and North Texas.

And even then, some of those are special 13th-game options.

Now, we know that Oklahoma is off the table, having filled their two open spots. But what this blog post presupposes is...what if they didn't?

CuseConfidential.com says SU might still be in talks with the Sooners to fill an open spot. John Garcia over at Scout also mentioned it as well. The rumor is that OU would drop one of their scheduled games to add us, though it seems hard to believe that they would give up a home game to travel to the Dome. The Orange need another home game and if Temple joins the conference and takes WVU's schedule, that will be a road game as well.

The idea of playing USC and Oklahoma in the same season sounds horrifying, but, we might not have many choices.

The Juice Online spoke with Syracuse Deputy Athletics Director Herman Frazier a few days back, who mentioned that "all options are on the table" and "the conferences (ACC and Big East offices) are fully involved at this point."

Missouri needs its final non-con game to take place on Nov. 17. Not sure how that would work for us.

Georgia Tech presents an interesting option. The Jackets are holding up the release of the ACC schedule due to issues over a moved date with one of their games. Considering SU and GT already had a series scheduled and are about to become conference-mates, could we be the solution to each other's problem? It sounds like they're going the FCS route, so perhaps not.

And so it goes...