Today is Feb 24, 2019, in exactly six months from today, Collegefootballfan.com plans to be at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii for our first game of our 2019 schedule.  To kick-off our 40^th season, we travel out over the Pacific to see Hawaii’s Rainbow Warriors (8-6) take on the Arizona Wildcats (5-7).  This will be our first game scheduled outside the continental US, and it fulfills a promise to St. Laurie that we would go back to the Islands to celebrate our 30^th wedding anniversary by going back to where we spent our honeymoon.  And she even gave her word in front of witnesses that we could go to a football game while there. Our timing couldn’t be any better!

Three new stadiums

     Games at Clemson and at Texas along with our far-off trip to the 50^th state enable us to add three more FBS venues to our current total of 60. We plan to see the 2018 Champion Tigers off a record-setting 15-0 record host Florida State (5-7) on October 12.    On November 9, we plan to journey to Austin, Texas for the first time to watch the improving Longhorns (10-4) battle the Kansas State Wildcats (5-7) under their new Head Coach Chris Kleiman, just on board after two consecutive FCS National Championships at North Dakota State.

FCS first for us

    And speaking of North Dakota State, FCS titlists for six of the last seven seasons, the Bison compete on our 2019 schedule for the first time ever when they visit the Fighting Blue Hens of Delaware on September 14 in a key FCS non-conference game.  Last season, like Clemson, ND State finished 15-0 including a 38-10 win over UD at home in Fargo.  This upcoming season, new HC Matt Entz, the Bison defensive coordinator for the past five seasons leads his team into Newark where HC Danny Rocco has the Blue Hens improving in his third season there.  Last season, the Blue Hens finished 7-5 losing their last three games. 

GAME 600!!!

     The 40^th year of our great adventure includes our 600th game since 1979.  It’ll be less than four years since we attended Game 500 when we traveled to West Point where we watched Army defeated Rutgers, 31-21. Well Rutgers (1-11), celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the first college football game ever against Princeton this season, will be one of our two celebrants for our milestone game when they clash at home with the Minnesota Golden Gophers (7-6). 

RU HC Chris Ash lives up to his surname this year being on the proverbial hot-seat with a 7-29 record after three seasons.  Across the way will be PJ Fleck entering his third season with the Gophers.  Fleck was former assistant under Greg Schiano at Rutgers.  This game marks our Big Tailgate event for the season!  We’re still planning a game or two beforehand to assure this falls in precisely as # 600 during our 2019 schedule.

Five Midshipmen…

    Of course, Navy and Penn State dominate our 2019 schedule. We hope to see the Mids (3-10) rebound from their first losing season in seven years.  To make it even more worthwhile, we’ll watch them do battle with both their primary rivals for the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.  On October 5, they’ll host Air Force (5-7) in Annapolis for our traditional “Boyz weekend”.  This will be the seventh time we see Mids host the “Zoomies.” On December 14^th, we’ll be back in Philly for our 12th meeting between Army (11-2) and Navy. Army’s won the last three meetings. For the storied rivals, this will be their 120^th    meeting.  It’ll certainly be another hotly contested gridiron clash on a very cold, December Saturday afternoon.

  …and three Nittany Lion games

Penn State games for us will be at State College on extreme weekends of the season. The Lions (9-4) host improving Buffalo (10-4) on September 7, and we’ll be back on November 30 for Senior Day against Rutgers.  In between, we’ll see PSU visit Maryland (5-7) in College Park on Friday, September 27.  We hope we can get to a PSU bowl game this season. It’ll be a priority for us.  We’ll see how the Lion offense adapts with Tommy Stevens stepping in for the graduated Trac McSorely at QB.  The coaching of UB HC Lance Leipold still intrigues us with the improvements being made at Buffalo since he took over after six D-3 National Championships at Wisconsin-Whitewater. Another successful season with the Bulls could have him moving on to a Power Five program looking to improve in 2020.

Break a record or two

In addition to all these FBS games, we look forward to helping set a D-3 attendance record on November 16 at The Meadowlands in East Rutherford.  On that day, traditional upstate New York rivals Cortland State (7-3) and Ithaca (8-3) will play for the 61^st time for the Cortaca Jug.  The venue enables them to set the record for the largest attendance ever at a D-3 game. The current record was set in September 2017 in a game between Minnesota rivals St. John’s and St.  Thomas at Target Field.  The Red Dragons of Cortland and the Bombers of Ithaca plan to eclipse the number of 37,355 souls in those seats that day.  We plan to be part of it.

  During our 40th season, we also hope to eclipse our own record on our 2019 schedule.  Three times we’ve amassed 26 games during the course of a season. We should make that mark once again this year. However, with the discipline to make RU vs. Minnesota our 600^th game on October 19, 2019, we will be looking for opportunities and convenient bowl scheduling to try to surpass our personal record for most games in one season.  Once again, we look forward to another great college football season!

  For our current, tentative 2019 schedule which is subject to change, click here to see our most up-to-date plan.