Syracuse football puts former rival Rutgers back on its schedule

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Syracuse University football announced it is adding former Big East rival Rutgers to its 2020 and 2021 schedules.

The series with Rutgers replaces a home-and-home series with Wisconsin, which the Orange and Badgers “mutually agreed” to cancel in December, Syracuse Athletics said in a news release.

Syracuse will travel to Rutgers on Sept. 12, 2020 and host the Scarlet Knights, who now compete in the Big Ten Conference, at the Carrier Dome on Sept. 11, 2021.

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 The two-game series restarts a regional football rivalry whose roots trace back to 1914. Syracuse and Rutgers played every season from 1980 to 2012, including 22 meetings as conference foes when both were members of the Big East Conference. The Orange hold a 30-12-1 advantage in the football series.

“We are very pleased to renew this series,” John Wildhack, Syracuse director of athletics, said in the release. “Rutgers is one of our traditional Northeast opponents, and we had some great games when both schools were in the Big East.”

Syracuse has been making moves to lessen the difficulty of its future non-conference football schedule in light of the difficulty of its annual ACC gridiron schedule. Replacing traditional power Wisconsin with Rutgers on the slate is another move on that front. The Orange also previously announced the addition of Holy Cross, Liberty, and Albany to its future football schedules.

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