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The official 2013 Syracuse football schedule is out and it looks pretty exciting. The official link with all the PR mumbo jumbo can be found here and below is the week by week game schedule to start putting into your calendar.
August 31 (MetLife) vs Penn State
September 7 @ Northwestern
September 14 Wagner
September 21 Tulane
October 5 Clemson
October 12 @ N.C. State
October 19 @ Georgia Tech
November 2 Wake Forrest
November 9 @ Maryland
November 16 @Florida State
November 23 Pittsburgh
November 30 Boston College
A few quick takeaways: Unless there is some flex scheduling in the ACC, Syracuse will be playing all of their games on Saturdays. I'm sure a bunch of these games will be nooners with the only definitive exception being the Penn State MetLife game, which will probably be another 4 p.m. ABC game.
Syracuse didn't get any gauntlet of a schedule stretch. October looks like the most difficult stretch with Clemson, N.C. State and Georgia Tech all pretty much guaranteed to be very solid football programs and Clemson potentially in the top 10.
Wagner was rumored to be the addition to the schedule but as Dan Lyons pointed out on twitter, because they do not have enough scholarship players, this game won't count towards bowl eligibility. That means Syracuse will need to win six other games if it wants to make a trip to the ACC's version of the Pinstripe Bowl.
(Update: According to Matt Park, who was told by the schedule maker Herman Frazier, it seems like the Wagner game will count towards bowl eligibility, but nothing is official. So, there's that.)
I won't make any picks until seeing the team play at least the Spring Game (April 20) but I only see three games on there I'm confident to chalk up as a win.
Thoughts, favorite games right now and is this a schedule you can live with?