UConn Football 2016 Schedule Released

The American Athletic Conference released its schedule for the upcoming 2016 football season. This is the fourth year of AAC football and for UConn, it should be a good one.

For starters, the non-conference schedule is particularly compelling with Virginia (Sat, Sept. 17) and Syracuse (Sat, Sept. 24) at home in back-to-back weeks. The Huskies will also be traveling to Boston College for a late-season non-conference bout with the Eagles on Saturday, November 19. So that's three winnable "power five" games.

A full look at the East Division Schedulehttps://t.co/i7sLgCGhc6 pic.twitter.com/X4L3slS35M

— American Football (@American_FB) February 9, 2016

Within the conference, UConn will have the pleasure of playing Navy early in the season. This will be an advantage because the Midshipmen will have a new guy under center for the first time in four years after Keenan Reynolds' graduation and also because it helps Diaco avoid disrupting the development of the defense in the middle of the season. It will also be nice for the fans to make a trip to lovely Annapolis, Maryland in early-September.

The Huskies will re-start conference play after Syracuse and Virginia with a road trip to Houston, where the Cougars will undoubtedly be looking to avenge the loss which prevented them from a perfect season in 2015. It won't get much easier from there with Cincinnati at home and USF, who I think is a leading candidate for the American-East, on the road.

UConn will play three more games after that difficult stretch before its bye week, which is occurring late in the season for the second year in a row. On the plus side, it will give the Huskies two weeks to prepare for Boston College. The Huskies will then host Tulane in the season finalé, where hopefully the warm-weather team will buckle as it has done so many times before at PAWS ARF.

Football Outsiders' first 2016 S&P+ Rankings were released on Monday. UConn is 81st, here is where the opponents stand:

UConn - 81st

Maine - NR

Navy - 66th

Virginia - 68th

Syracuse - 44th

Houston - 53rd

Cincinnati - 70th

USF - 41st

UCF - 99th

East Carolina - 78th

Temple - 61st

Boston College - 50th

Tulane - 122nd