Boston College Football: Who Fills Out The 2013 Schedule?

The ACC's decision to go back to an eight-game conference schedule in football leaves a hole in the Eagles 2013 non-conference schedule. Boston College currently has home games against Army and Stony Brook and a road game at USC. Since we now know the timing of Syracuse's move to the ACC (2013), the previously scheduled non-conference series will slot in as an Atlantic Division game. That frees up the 12th and final spot on the Eagles' 2013 non-conference schedule.

It will be interesting to see if the department waits for the new Athletic Director to be installed before filling the scheduling slot left by Syracuse. If the school doesn't and Kane makes the decision, my guess is BC will host a MAC program at Alumni in 2013.

Just who from the MAC is available in 2013? The pickings are slim.

Central Michigan has a slot available on the 2013 schedule, but the Chippewas already have three non-conference road games set against Michigan, N.C. State and UNLV. I doubt the program will hit the road for every one of their non-conference games. Western Michigan is the only other MAC program with some availability. Two spots, actually. The Broncos are currently slated to play Michigan State and Iowa, both on the road.

Outside of the MAC, a few other non-power conference programs have limited availability.

Conference USA programs have a bunch of availability as the conference undergoes a major facelift in 2013. The departures of Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, and SMU to the Big East, backfilled by Florida International, Louisiana Tech, North Texas and Texas-San Antonio leaves a lot of C-USA program's non-conference schedules in flux.

A total of seven C-USA programs have one open date, with Florida International and Tulane already scheduled to play two home non-conference games and one road game. That would leave FIU and Tulane as prime candidates to face the Eagles in 2013. Marshall, Rice, Southern Miss, UAB and UTEP also have an open slot. If BC dips into Conference USA, my preference would be to play a school like Rice or Tulane given the institutional similarities (small, private schools).

Fresno State is the only Mountain West team without a full non-conference schedule in 2013. Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, Georgia State, Middle Tennessee State, Texas State and Louisiana-Lafayette from the new Sun Belt all have availability, too.

From the ranks of the independents, BYU has a slot available (currently at six home, five road games). In fact, should the Cougars choose to, the program has two scheduling slots available in 2012. BYU can take advantage of the NCAA's "Hawaii rule" that allows programs that travel to Honolulu to schedule a 13th regular season game to offset the expense of flying to Hawaii.

The other two programs that will be hurting for 2013 opponents are the soon-to-be football independent Idaho Vandals and New Mexico State Aggies. With both program's typical WAC schedule pulled out from under them next season, both programs only have four games currently scheduled in 2013.

Of course, the program could always decide to double-down on the FCS paycheck games. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world at this point, though it would require an additional win to become bowl eligible (assuming that BC takes care of business in both FCS games).

Thanks to fbschedules.com.