NAVY LOSES NOTRE DAME BUT GAINS BYU AS THE 2020 SCHEDULE IS FINALIZED
The Naval Academy announced its final 2020 football schedule that featured one notable change. The Notre Dame game that was scheduled for Labor Day weekend in Annapolis has been canceled and been replaced with a game against BYU. The game against the Cougars will be Labor Day night at 8pm in Annapolis. It will be televised on ESPN. This move was necessitated by Notre Dame essentially joining the ACC for the coming season. The Irish usually play five ACC opponents per season but this year they will play twice that number. After several opponents canceled games against the Irish the ACC offered to help them out. ACC schools will play ten conference games and one non conference game this season. The catch is the non conference game has to be in a state where a conference school resides. That eliminated Maryland as a possible location.
Navy has played Notre Dame for 93 consecutive years and was the longest running intersectional rivalry. The BYU matchup was a natural fit because the Cougars are not members of a conference and were looking for games to fill out their schedule. Navy coach Ken Niumatololo has a few connections to the school as well. He strongly considered leaving Navy for Provo in 2015.The coach’s oldest son Va’a played football and graduated from BYU in 2017. He has joined the Navy staff this offseason after coaching at Hawaii the last 2 seasons. Navy will travel to BYU in the future to return the game.
Navy has also announced they will not replace the Lafayette game on their schedule. This leaves them with eight conference games, BYU, Air Force, and Army on the schedule. No decision on fans possibly attending home games has been announced at this time.
