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Stanford Football 2020 Schedule Preview

As the summer months crept along and the Covid maps burned a dark red, there were no indications that we would see any college football this academic year, and certainly nothing in the fall. Though some aren't convinced that the public health environment has changed much over the past three months, a modified Pac-12 season is only two weeks away.

With seven scheduled games instead of twelve and almost no likelihood that any conference team will even be considered for the College Football Playoffs, things will be different. How different? No Pac-12 team will play any non-conference opponents, and for the first time since 1945, Stanford won't play either USC or UCLA. 

Given all this, it would be silly to make any prognostications at this point. Wiser people than I have sworn off making predictions about anything that might or might not happen during this crazy year, but since fortune favors the bold, I choose instead to go forth with one of my favorite posts of the year -- a game-by-game prediction of the Cardinal's 2020 football schedule.

2020 Schedule Preview

If you're like me -- I think you are -- and you've been waiting on the edge of your seat for the Pac-12 to release its 2020 schedule, the long wait is over. It'll be more than eight months before the Cardinal players can officially rinse the bad taste of 2019 from their mouths, but for those of us longing for Saturdays in the sun, now's the time to mark your calendars and make your travel plans.

Here's the quick overview.

• The notorious even-year schedule features several challenging road games, but the typically bland home slate will be spiced up a bit when BYU comes to the Farm to close out the regular season on November 28th.
• For the first time in several seasons there will be no Thursday night games, but the conference did manage to sneak in an amateurish Friday night game in October, which is unfortunate.
• Finally, while a prolonged stretch of home games and a well-placed bye week allowed the Cardinal to spend all of October without leaving Palo Alto last season, the team won't play home games on consecutive weekends this fall.

With some critics saying that David Shaw and the Cardinal are sitting squarely at a crossroads, desperately in need of a return to the success enjoyed through most of last decade, this isn't an ideal schedule. Let's take a look. Here's your first never-too-early schedule preview, complete with some highly scientific win-probability analysis.