A hat-tip to our good friends at FBSchedules.com for this one: For the first time, Navy football has released what could be considered a nonconference schedule.
According to the official Navy athletics website, there are four games on the slate for 2015, not including whoever the Mids will face in their inaugural Big East season. The list includes a home game against Air Force (Oct. 3), a visit to Notre Dame (Oct. 10), a trip to Hawaii (Nov. 28, adjust your Thanksgiving weekend plans accordingly) and the Army-Navy game Dec. 12 in Philadelphia.
The trip to Hawaii qualifies Navy for the so-called “Hawaii exemption,” which allows teams traveling across the Pacific to make up some of the costs by adding a 13th game to the schedule (the FBSchedules.com guys have this covered, too). That means another nonconference game could be on the slate, assuming an eight-game conference schedule. The nonconference slate as it stands also means the Big East portion of the schedule would start early — a nontraditional setup, as most Football Bowl Subdivision powerhouses use the first two or three weeks of the season to beat up on nonconference doormats or engage in big-ticket showdowns.
The Big East hasn’t announced its divisional alignment or its conference scheduling setup for 2015, or any plans past the 2012 season. And because the conference could expand past the 15 teams it’s on track to have in 2015 or lose some of its incoming members before they even play a game (it happened with TCU), don’t expect an announcement anytime soon.
