UMass Minutemen postpone October game v. USF

The UMass football program has agreed to postpone their game against USF that was scheduled for October, to accommodate the AAC’s Hurricane Irma rescheduling.

Hurricane Irma devastated the southeastern seaboard recently, forcing the cancellation or postponement of tons of college football games. Now, UMass will be impacted as well.

The Minutemen have agreed to postpone their game with the USF Bulls that was scheduled for October 14th. The game was going to take place in Tampa Bay, Florida, but now with a postponement last week, USF needs to get their AAC conference games in.

USF will now take on the Cincinnati Bearcats on October 14th instead of UMass. The shuffling of games didn’t stop there though. The originally scheduled game between USF and UMass will now be played in either 2022 or 2023. The 2018 game at UMass between the two is not affected by any of these changes.

UMass will add a new opponent to their season, FIU. That game will be played in Miami on December 2nd, and it will be the 12th game of the season for both teams, but if FIU qualifies for the C-USA championship the UMass game will not be played. In that scenario, UMass would return to FIU sometime in the future after 2020, as FIU will play at UMass during the 2020 season.

With the new look schedule, the Minutemen will now have back-to-back bye weeks on October 7th and 14th. That also results in three straight home games for UMass, with Ohio on September 30th, Georgia Southern on October 21st, and Appalachian State on October 28th. A bye week would also be in play if the FIU game is played, with games on November 18th v. BYU and then December 2nd v. FIU.

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For now, though, UMass is focused on Temple. The Minutemen and Owls will face off at 7 PM on Friday night action at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. UMass will look to earn their first win of the season after dropping their first 3 games.