Look Ahead At Future Football Schedules

This week, the AAC announced football opponents and game locations for the next two seasons. You can start to get a sense of how the year will look. Here’s the 2020 schedule as we currently know it:

2020


~~9/3/2020~~	~~TDECU~~
~~9/12/2020~~	~~Pullman~~
~~9/18/2020~~	~~Memphis~~
~~9/19/2020~~	~~Waco~~
~~9/26/2020~~	~~TDECU~~
10/8/2020	TDECU	W: 49-31
10/16/2020	TDECU	L: 43-26
10/24/2020	Annapolis	W: 37-21
10/31/2020	TDECU	L: 44-21
11/7/2020	Cincinnati	L: 38-10
11/14/2020	TDECU	W: 56-21
~~11/21/2020~~	~~Dallas~~
~~11/28/2020~~	~~TDECU~~
~~12/5/2020~~	~~Dallas~~
12/12/2020	Memphis	L: 30-27
12/24/2020	Frisco

The trips to Pullman, Provo, Cincinnati, and Annapolis make this schedule stick out. That’s a lot of travel: 13,824 miles round-trip. The Cougars will play in all four continental time zones (Cincinnati and Annapolis in the Eastern, Memphis and Dallas [and Houston!] in the Central, Provo in the Mountain, and Pullman in the Pacific Time Zone).

Week 3 Possibilities

AAC teams will play 36 of 44 out-of-conference games in September. That leaves little inventory for league games in the month. Eight AAC schools have games on the 9/19 weekend which means that there are only three possibilities for the 9/19 date for UH. It will be either @Navy, Tulane at home, or an off week. Either UH or Tulane gets screwed in one of these three possibilities.

Since Navy entered the AAC, UH’s games with them have been mid-October (Navy home games) and Thanksgiving weekend (UH home games). I don’t expect the AAC to move them up to September because back-to-back trips to Pullman and Annapolis for UH would mean 7,200 roundtrip miles in 8 days.

2019 was the first time in AAC play that UH played Tulane before October 16th (the 2019 game was Thursday, September 19th) but looks like it could happen again. This scenario would put Tulane on the road for three-straight weeks (@Northwestern, @UH, @Miss St).

The third option would be getting week 3 off for the Cougars then playing 10-straight weekends (only one off-week in 2020). UH is not enthralled with a schedule that requires them to play 10-straight games. In this scenario, Tulane and Navy would play in New Orleans in week 3 as Navy is probably getting week 1 off (they’ll play week 0 vs Notre Dame in Ireland).

If UH does play Tulane that third weekend, it would mean three home games at TDECU in September. The Coogs didn’t play their 3rd home game until October 24th in 2019. It would also mean just 3 home games in October and November combined.

Below are future dates for OOC games and opponents for 2021. We’ve archived this in the football tab of the navigation.

2021


9/4	NRG Stadium	38-21 L
9/11	Rice Stadium	W 44-7
9/18	TDECU	W 45-0
9/25	TDECU	W 28-20
10/1	Tulsa	W 45-10
10/7	New Orleans	W 40-22
10/23	TDECU	W 31-24 (OT)
10/30	TDECU	W 44-37
11/6	Tampa	W 54-42
11/13	Philadelphia	W 37-8
11/19	TDECU	W 31-13
11/27	Hartford	W 45-17
12/4	Cincinnati	35-20 L
12/28	Birmingham Bowl	W 17-13

2022


9/3		San Antonio
9/10		Lubbock
9/17		TDECU
9/24		TDECU
9/30		TDECU
10/7		Memphis
10/22		Annapolis
10/29		TDECU
11/5		Dallas
11/12		TDECU
11/19		Greenville
11/25-26		TDECU

2023


9/2/2023		TDECU
9/9/2023		Rice Stadium
9/16/2023		TDECU
9/23/2023		TDECU
9/30/2023		Lubbock
10/12/2023		TDECU
10/21/2023		TDECU
10/28/2023		Manhattan
11/4/2023		Waco
11/11/2023		TDECU
11/18/2023		TDECU
11/25/2023		Orlando