The 2020 Conference USA Football championship game has been moved to Dec. 18, a two-week delay to allow the conference scheduling flexibility.
In an announcement that seemed several weeks in the making, the Conference USA football championship game will be delayed two weeks. The game was initially scheduled to take place on Dec. 5, but will now take place on Dec. 18. Per the league office, it will be televised at 6 p.m. CT and be hosted by the team with the highest league winning percentage.
In their release, Conference USA cited scheduling flexibility as a driving force for the change.
The shift of the Championship Game from its originally scheduled December 5th date will create two additional weeks to schedule games that were postponed due to COVID-19-related issues. Dates and matchups for those re-scheduled games will be announced at a later date.
More: Week 6 Conference USA Football Roundup
It should be noted the conference opted to delay the game two weeks rather than one. This gives two additional weekends to play games. There have been multiple league games already postponed and one team, FAU, had already scheduled a game for Dec. 5 prior to the conference formally moving the championship game. The Owls are slated to take on Georgia Southern on that date, a makeup of a game postponed earlier in the year.
For Rice Football, this move allows for two additional weeks on the back end of the current schedule. I expect a rescheduling of the UAB to be among the Owls’ most pressing items, completing a full C-USA West schedule.
There’s also a chance the Bayou Bucket game against Houston is rescheduled later in the year. Houston is tentatively free on Dec. 5. One would assume conference games would be the priority, but if those are played as scheduled don’t rule an intra-city matchup between the Owls and Cougars this fall.
