We still don't know when the Syracuse Orange will begin playing football in the ACC. Could be 2014. Could be sooner. Either way, the conference move eliminates a lot of our future non-conference football opponents and means SU will have to start thinking about filling those schedules all over again.
Here's what Syracuse is looking at for the time being:
2012 - at Minnesota, Northwestern, USC
2013 - Penn State, at Northwestern, at Boston College
2014 - Boston College, Notre Dame
2015 - Georgia Tech, at Boston College, Navy, at Notre Dame
2016 - at Georgia Tech, Boston College, Notre Dame
2017 - at Navy, at Boston College, at Notre Dame
2018 - at Boston College
2019 - Boston College
2020 - at Boston College
With the move to the ACC, Syracuse will move from seven conference games to nine (assumed), so that at least cuts down on the chance we'll run out of time and scramble to fill space (ala 2010). That said, big chunks of our future schedules just opened up as well.
Most notably in 2015 and 2016, which feature two opponents that just switched from non-conference to conference. Not that it's going to happen, but in the crazy event that Notre Dame joined the ACC, well, then we'd really be starting from scratch.
There's something funny about the idea that our 2015 game against Navy might still end up involving the Big East.
If we somehow do jump after this year, our non-conference schedule is set for 2012 with the three teams we have. Otherwise, we still need to add one more (TCU increases the conference schedule to 8 games).
If we jump in time for the 2013 season, we'll need to find someone to replace BC. And same goes for 2014 where we'll need to find two OOC opponents.
After that, we'll have to fill in the space around Notre Dame and Navy. Expect to see some FCS schools fill in a lot of that. It's probably too early to say which remaining Big East teams we'll schedule, especially since we don't yet know if anyone else is joining us. Just something worth keeping an eye on in the coming months.