2017 Football Schedule Released

There are a number of reasons for which planning for September is silly. Still, planning to support our favorite college football team is now easier to do with the newly released schedule from MGS!

Let us go through the schedule, folks. I will stay away from predicting anything but that might be hard to do.

September

NT opens up the season with five straight weeks’ worth of games. Clear your calendar of anything on Saturdays in September.

Lamar is an FCS team, and should serve as warm-up game before the next week’s Safeway Bowl battle against SMU. At worst, NT should be 1-1. Yet another trip to Iowa will hopefully return at least a moral victory. The Hawkeyes have more than a few fans in our athletic department and so they should be excited about this trip. Again.

UAB will visit Denton in its renaissance year. The last time NT faced the Blazers, The Freshman Sensation turned the ball over one too many times for Mac’s liking. UAB deserves a shellacking at our hands and I am hoping this comes to pass. Next up is USM and a trip to Hattiesburg. I have at least one friend near there so that prevents me from completely dumping on them. They should be better than the team the saw in Denton last season, but everything is new so who knows.

October

A bye week right before UTSA in Denton. We want a measure of revenge. I like the idea of this pairing happening each October. The following week, NT visits Lane Kiffin and FAU. It will not be boring. ODU makes their first visit to Denton. They had a great run leading up to a bowl game last year, and they might be ripe for a falling off. Their schedule was softish in 2016, and their hardest games were at home. I’m looking forward to this one.

November

I can see a scenario where NT enters November with about three wins and needing to have a great month to go bowling. As there likely will not be an APR bump this year, Littrell will need to win the games to get in. LaTech in Ruston will be very tough, but UTEP and (the rematch of the rematch!) Army are very winnable, despite the last games against both. Finally, two days after Thanksgiving NT visits Rice making it two straight years we go to Houston.

While the turnout was pretty good last year, I do not expect we will see many NT fans make the trip unless there is something big to play for. Even then, a trip two days after Turkey Day is a big ask.

Thoughts

From this vantage, NT has six winnable games. Of course there are too many days between now and then to make accurate predictions and so take this with a grain of salt, etc. I really like that Rice is off the home/away schedule that UTSA and UTEP were on with us. Really, no one is making a trip to El Paso regularly. Having UTSA and Rice on alternating years is great. It allows NT fans to have one in-state road trip to plan for.

GMG