Baylor-SMU matchup in 2013 to be officially canceled

Here are the tweets from Werner and Smoak that cemented the news:

Though SMU will drop football game vs. Baylor this year for Montana State, SMU AD Rick Hart said the teams still will meet in 2014 in Waco.

— John Werner(@JohnWernerTrib) February 20, 2013

Baylor Director of Athletics Ian McCaw to me on SMU canceling '13 game vs Bears, "we're working diligently to find a 12th game for 2013."

— David Smoak (@DavidSmoak) February 20, 2013

Werner's tweet lines up with the statements from SMU's AD about continuing the series into the future.

Ok, before everyone freaks out about SMU screwing up our schedule, know that they couldn't have done this amicably without Baylor's consent. And we certainly wouldn't continue the existing relationship if we felt like we were getting screwed in 2013. That, to me, says two different things:

1) Baylor already has a backup plan that has yet to be disclosed; and,
2) Baylor wanted out of this game for our own reasons.

I don't mean that to sound like I'm saying Baylor is some all-powerful football deity that will force SMU to play a game they don't want to play, I mean that the reality of the situation indicates to me that both teams agreed it was in their best interest to forgo meeting in 2013. SMU's motivations, as we discussed when this first came up, are pretty clear. They had a schedule with non-conference games against Texas Tech, TCU, and Texas A&M, in addition to Baylor. No disrespect intended to the Mustangs, but they were not going to be favored in any of those games. Not likely, anyway. They will be against Montana State, and they have the same number of home games as before.

Baylor's motivations are a little more tricky. It may be that in our last season in Floyd Casey we wanted another home game on our schedule. That seems plausible and easy enough to accomplish if we fill the spot with a FCS team. It may also (or instead) be that we wanted to ensure ourselves another victory in a year where we don't actually play a FCS school to date, something that seems a little less likely since I don't think we were scared of SMU in the first place. I really don't know.

What I do know is that Baylor's 2013 schedule now stands at 11 games announced so far, so we have a spot to fill. That means our schedule look like this:

We have open dates in the first week of the season, which is actually referred to as "Week Zero" by most, and the weeks of September 14 (now that SMU is gone), September 28, and November 2. I'd bet a lot of money we don't fill our in-conference bye week with a game, so that means 11/2 is out. I'd also bet we rather enjoy our break before conference play begins, so 9/28 is probably out, too.

That leaves 8/31 (week 0) and the new date of 9/14 as the likely suspects for a replacement game against a foe that has yet to be determined. When we know, or when I get a better idea of who it might be, I'll either update this thread or make a new one. Until then, we can wonder together how our 2013 season will unfold. All we know for sure is that it won't include the SMU Mustangs.