ORLANDO, Fla. – The deadly storm has passed, and the floodwaters of a diluted conference schedule have receded with the announcement on Wednesday that UCF has worked with the AAC to move their Memphis matchup to September 30, nixing the University of Maine from the schedule.
It was a historic movement for the American Athletic Conference in undertaking a massive schedule shift to accommodate four conference teams that would have been left a game short – UCF, Memphis, UCONN and USF.
“There are a lot of moving parts, I don’t know if there’s precedent for moving that many games in conference play,” said UCF Athletic Director Danny White.
“It’s so complicated, I think a week ago we were all thinking that it was highly unlikely that it could get rescheduled, but the more we looked at it and looked at it, it turned out there was a way but it required a lot of willing partners. I think the level of devastation across the state of Florida, everybody understands how impactful Hurricane Irma was and certainly that put people on a more cooperating place.”
Hurricane relief was airdropped to the Knights in caseloads of cooperation. From inside the American alone, seven teams altered their schedules. Cincinnati, Houston, ECU, UCONN and USF were in the initial round of modifications, and the UCF-Memphis pairing was the latest addition.
The University of Maine was a willing participant as well – though it didn’t sound like the university had much of a choice in their downgrade to a mid-season buyout.
“They had to choose between us and playing a conference game,” said Karlton Creech, Maine’s athletic director to the Press Herald. “They chose the conference game. There’s not much to it.”
“They had to make a decision and they did. We respect and understand why they did it.”
Creech confirmed to the Press Herald that Maine will receive a $350,000 buyout for missing the game on Saturday, funds that will come from the American Athletic Conference offices.
“The conference has funds for these types of events,” explained Danny White. “Hopefully this is a once in a lifetime type of event with this hurricane and the impact it had on football scheduling. I don’t expect we’ll be dealing with this again in the near future.”
As for the marquee series that was to headline UCF’s home schedule? Well, don’t count out UCF yet as a future host of Georgia Tech. Cancelling this year’s game has not put the kibosh on the home-and-home series. It helps to have a friendly face among the Yellow Jacket’s ranks.
“We’re working, talking with Todd Stansbury, the Athletic Director who used to be here – now he’s there – I talked to him this morning and we both want to keep the series, we’re going to work on finding a date that they can come back down here. We intent to go up there in 2020 as scheduled right now,” said White.
Players will get the weekend off in place of the Georgia Tech game, getting to use it as their one free weekend, in the words of Dany White. It means that there will most likely be a game scheduled for the weekend of October 28, the Knights’ original bye week.
“We’re working really hard to try and find an eleventh game. I don’t want this team, they’ve worked too hard, they deserve to play at least eleven,” emphatically insisted White.
For now, however, there are a lot of moving pieces to nail down.
