Kansas Football: Conference-only season seems inevitable for Jayhawks

While it hasn’t been announced yet, don’t be surprised when the Big 12 makes the decision to move to a conference-only season. That’d remove three non-conference games from Kansas football’s 2020 schedule.

This would be a smart move and even if the Big 12 doesn’t make this decision, it’s still likely one that happens either way for Kansas football, as New Hampshire and Coastal Carolina having football seasons in 2020 aren’t the likeliest of scenarios considering they’re in smaller conferences.

While Boston College – who plays in the ACC – could still end up having a season, the ACC will probably be another Power-5 conference to make the decision to make to a conference-only schedule.

Kansas football plays all three of their non-conference games in the first month of the season, making it even easier to eliminating them and starting the season later than normal.

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This would give them an opening game against Baylor in Waco and then three weeks off until their next game, which be home against Iowa State.

The Big Ten was the first Power-5 conference to make the decision to move to a conference-only schedule and they made the rule stand for all of their fall sports. While the other conferences have yet to follow, it’ll be coming soon. This wouldn’t change much for Kansas football, other than they’d have three less games.

The Jayhawks play everyone in their conference every year, so they’d still follow that, but would have three less games to play and perhaps that would lead to playing some schools twice. For instance, maybe Kansas would play in-state foe Kansas State twice (one home, one away) this year to make up for lost games.

None of us are really sure what to expect with the college football season at this point (or if we’ll even have a college football season), but the Big Ten set the trend with their ruling last week.

Obviously the removal of three non-conference opponents make it tough for KU to win many games. They’d have beaten New Hampshire (joke all you want – they’d have beaten New Hampshire) and even though they didn’t take care of business against Coastal Carolina last year, they’d be favored, even on the road.

Kansas BEAT Boston College on their home turf last year and would get the Eagles at home this time around so that’d have been an interesting game to watch.

At the end of the day, playing fall sports within the conferences is the smart decision even if it does eliminate a few wins for Kansas in 2020.