After facing SMU in Dallas last season, and getting trounced 31-18, the Orange host the Mustangs this time around for Saturday afternoon's matchup (12:00 p,m, ET / ESPN2). The game almost completes the home-and-home matchups with the ACC's three 2024 "expansion teams" Cal, SMU, and Stanford, with the 'Cuse set to play its first football game in Palo Alto next season.

So while hosting SMU takes care of the other 16 ACC football schools having made at least one appearance in central New York, there are several other major name programs on our wish list for non-conference meetings.

The ACC's nine game scheduling formula includes the provision that one of three non-league games eah season be contested against another Power Four conference team. In 2027, SU goes to Penn State, then hosts the Nittany Lions in '28.

In 2029, SU begins a stretch of three games (one home, two away) versus Notre Dame over an eight year period (2029-2037), which will satisfy the P4 non-conference requirement for three of those seasons, while in 2030 SU only plays eight ACC games as part of the league's rotating formula.

Only a few all-time winning programs have yet to play a college football game in the Dome

When you look at the list of the all-time winningest college football programs, as NCAA.com wrote in the summer of 2025 when talk of expanding the College Football Playoff began to swell, you see all but one program (excluding Ivy League member Yale) has played at least one game vs. Syracuse in the Dome era (1980-present).

The only exception is Alabama.

When you expand the list out to the Top 20 schools, and again excluding Ivy League members Harvard, Penn, and Princeton, and smaller schools Mt. Union and North Dakota State, the P4 teams missing on the Dome list are just Georgia and Southern Cal, a team SU played "at home" in 2012 at the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Every other Top 20, all-time winning program, has played at least one game on the SU campus. That is impressive, and that also makes the short list easy for future non-conference matchups we want to see Syracuse schedule for home-and-home series:

1) Alabama - The one college football program whose nickname was included in the 1978 Steely Dan hit "Deacon Blues" ("They got a name for the winners in the world. (I) I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues. (Deacon Blues)."), is the must-have program on the wish list. The teams have only met twice, a 'Cuse 23-0 win in a1923 game at Archbold Stadium, and a 61-6 defeat in the 1953 Orange Bowl. By-the-way, Boston College got Alabama to agree to a home-and-home in 2031 (home) and 2034 (away). We are jealous.

2) Georgia - How about Fran Brown matching wits with one of his mentors in Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart? Like with Bama, SU has a short history with Georgia only playing one game in the 1989 Peach Bowl in Atlanta, a clutch 19-18 win during a period the Bulldogs program was in a bit of a drought, while SU was riding the wave of success. A return game "between the hedges" in Athens would be a fun road trip for Orange fans,

3) USC - And we do not mean the SEC's South Carolina, but this time, schedule the Trojans, the 12th winningest program, to play in CNY, and not North Jersey. SU is 0-4 in the all-time series, having played twice at the famous L.A. Memorial Coliseum (1924, 2013). If USC can make the trip to Jersey or State College to play a current Big Ten conference game, they can trek to the 'Cuse just as easily.

SUPPORT THE JUICE ONLNE

Follow us on Twitter @TheJuiceOnline, like us on Facebook, follow on IG @SUJuiceOnline and listen to .