TheSabre.com’s Fan Friday: New Virginia Football Schedule

The ACC announced its plans for fall sports this week and teams at Virginia now know they’re scheduled to begin play the week of Sept. 7-12. Conference football teams can play as early as Monday, Sept., 7 and other fall sports teams can begin play as early as Thursday, Sept. 10.

The conference left the door open for potential non-conference games in football, but any of those games would have to be held in the state of the ACC hosting team (so UVA would have to play in Virginia). The SEC also announced fall plans this week, which included conference only games for its members. Those decisions combined to eliminate the previously scheduled kickoff classic game with Georgia that was set to be played Monday, Sept. 7 in Atlanta.

In the meantime, the ACC also shuffled its conference matchups and announced game locations, but not dates and times. That included a move to 10 league games and the news that Notre Dame, a football independent, would play a full ACC slate of 10 games this fall. For Virginia, the assigned schedule breaks down with home games against Boston College, Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, and NC State plus road games against Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest.

If you didn’t see it earlier, here’s the full schedule grid.

Obviously, these changes in college sports are related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Spring sports were cancelled earlier in 2020 and ACC Commissioner John Swofford addressed possible changes in the future as well if needed. “We recognize that we may need to be nimble and make adjustments in the future,” he said in the ACC news release. “We will be as prepared as possible should that need arise.”

Regardless, a new slate of football games provided plenty of fan conversation for the last week in July. Some posts from varying threads on TheSabre.com football message board about the scheduling news are below.

As the calendar prepares to turn to August, preseason practice to prepare for those games is on the horizon. UVA is scheduled to begin preseason practice on Sunday, August 9. That’s enough to at least provide a little hope for fans. With that as the backdrop, let’s dive into the rest of TheSabre.com’s Fan Friday feature!

Fan(s) Of The Week

Stand up and support the Hoos.

Student Fan(s) Of The Week

Let’s go!

Feature Photo Of The Week

UVA senior kicker Brian Delaney has been named to the preseason Lou Groza Award Watch List.