Pitt schedules FCS member Austin Peay to start the season Sept. 12

Pitt finalized its reconfigured 2020 schedule Tuesday when director of athletics Heather Lyke announced the Panthers will open the season Sept. 12 at Heinz Field against Austin Peay, an FCS school located in Clarksville, Tenn.

Austin Peay will replace Miami (Ohio) of the Mid-American Conference on Pitt’s schedule. The MAC postponed fall sports because of the coronavirus.

The Panthers have never played Austin Peay, but the Governors could prove to be a formidable challenge for the first game of the season.

They were 11-4 last season and advanced to the Football Championship Subdivision quarterfinals, recording 42-6 and 42-28 victories against Furman and Sacramento State before losing to Montana State, 24-10.

Narduzzi said the late notice — coaches normally start preparing for the opener in May — will force some on his staff to work overtime.

”Our (graduate assistants) and quality control guys are ready to do an all-nighter,” he said. “You’d like to know a heckuva lot earlier than this.

“It’s going to slow preparation down. Really, it’s equal for both of us.”

Because the reconfigured schedule is different from the original — Pitt won’t play annual opponents Virginia, North Carolina and Duke — preparations for those games are useless.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “we just wasted a lot of time and so did Virginia and Duke and everybody else, for sure.

“That was why I was so upset. Every coach in the ACC put a ton of work in. We spent a week on Miami (Ohio), maybe more. When the ACC scrapped our entire schedule and then made up their whole new one, it was kind of like, `Why are we doing that?’ “

Austin Peay will be Pitt’s only nonconference game this season. Pitt will play 10 ACC opponents, starting with Syracuse on Sept. 19 at Heinz Field.

The ACC switched from a 12-game regular season to 11 in response to the pandemic.