Big East Schedule (Finally) Released

@cwalter76 We're working hard to get it done, will be ready soon. Obviously lots of factors holding it up this year (realignment, TV, etc.)
— BIG EAST Football (@BigEastFB) February 28, 2013

The Big East (finally) released their 2013 schedule today, after the scheduling process was delayed because of conference realignment and TV, according to my "inside" "source" at the conference. We already knew what Rutgers' schedule looked like for the first four games of the season, in addition to their home and away conference opponents, and now we finally know how the rest of the schedule is laid out.

August 29 @Fresno State (Thursday)
September 7 Norfolk State
September 14 Eastern Michigan
September 21 Arkansas
October 5 @SMU
October 10 @Louisville (Thursday)
October 26 Houston
November 2 Temple
November 16 Cincinnati
November 21 @Central Florida (Thursday)
November 30 @Connecticut
December 7 South Florida

Some thoughts:

I figured they would play Louisville on a short week, but I was really hoping it would not be this early in the season. Rutgers is going to have a young secondary this year, and it would have been ideal for this game to be in November or December so they had as much experience as possible before facing Teddy Bridgewater. At least they will have been tested by Fresno State and SMU, who both have very good passing attack, before this one. SMU is also probably the perfect team to play before a short week, since they are not a very physical team.

For some reason, Rutgers will have 16!!! days between the Louisville game and their next game against Houston. Having some time off at the half way point of the season is nice, but this is excessive. I don't recall a team ever having that big of a break in the schedule, and you have to worry about rust being a factor against Houston.

Having an off week before playing Cincinnati is probably the best thing about this schedule.

December 7th will be the latest Rutgers has ever played a regular season game. It will probably be cold, and that should be a big advantage for the Knights against South Florida.

The Louisville and Central Florida games will be nationally televised on ESPN, and the South Florida game be on either ESPN, ESPN2, or ABC. The Louisville game is obviously going to be the marquee game Rutgers plays this year, and it will be on at the same time as the baseball playoffs, presumably. That's really unfortunate, especially if the Yankees are playing at the same time. The opener against Fresno State should be on national TV too (the Mountain West has a really weird TV deal so it could be on NBC Sports Net, CBS Sports Net, Fox or one of the ESPN's), as should the Arkansas game.