It's time for our weekly check-in on the 2012 Syracuse Orange football schedule as we continue to hope we avoid the inevitable double FCS placement.

It's sounding more and more like the Temple Owls will be joining the Big East this upcoming season, thereby filling one empty slot for us.

Temple University's Board of Trustees will meet via conference call Wednesday afternoon to discuss the fate of the school's athletic program and perhaps accept an invitation to become a member of the Big East Conference in all sports. (via CSN Philly)

One down, one to go. And there ain't much left for that one.

According to NationalChamps.net, the remaining non-Big East schools needing to fill an empty spot and/or eligible to add a 13th game due to the Hawaii travel rule are:

Boise State (13th), Missouri and Nevada (13th).

That's it.

Every single Big East team still needs to fill one spot while Pittsburgh, Cincy and us need to fill two. That means, assuming the Temple addition satisfies the others, the Pitt-Cincy-Syracuse trio are battling it out for Missouri, assuming they're not adding a FCS.

The flip side is that the Orange really need that game to be a home game. With the USC one taking place in NJ, the Orange currently have five home games in 2012 (assuming Temple slides into WVU's place as a scheduled road game). About the only way they can play at home at this point would be to schedule a FCS school. And even then, they've got us by the short and curlies since they know how much we need the game.

It's not getting any prettier as the weeks pass. I think we all know what the Orange have to do at this point, which, sucks. We'll see if they pull the trigger sooner or later.