PAC Spring Football Update

Starting date, 2 divisions highlight conference announcement

Football is coming back to the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.

It is one of several sports to return to the PAC in the spring, and Friday, March 12 is set as the official starting date for the abbreviated 2020 season.

You read that right: PAC football games are going to be played under the lights on Fridays.

“We’re excited about it,” Joe Onderko, the commissioner of the PAC, said. “We think playing on Friday nights is going to be something that [is] embraced.”

The PAC altered game schedules and divisions of the teams as well.

The 10 football teams in the conference are split into a North and South Division, with five teams in each division. In the north, it’s Case Western Reserve University, Geneva College, Grove City College, Thiel College and Westminster College.

The Waynesburg Yellow Jackets are placed in the south division along with Bethany College, Carnegie Mellon University, Washington and Jefferson College and Saint Vincent College.

The game schedule will work as a 5 game ‘round-robin,’ meaning Waynesburg will play each opponent once within its division, and the final game will be a crossover game with an opponent from the opposite division depending on seeding.

“We can match up the ones against each other, the twos, the threes,” Onderko said, “and really for the first time in our history have a legitimate PAC football championship game. That’s exciting.”

For the Jackets, they are looking forward to the return of the season, but not having a season in the fall does have its setbacks.

“When the weather gets cool in the mornings and at night, that’s the time of year that we’re supposed to be on the field,” said head football coach Chris Smithley. “The fall is always that measuring stick to see where you’re at and your level of competition, and we’re missing that measuring stick.”

In some aspects, however, this has given Waynesburg more time to develop the team as well as newcomers.

“Normally a freshman will come in here and he’ll have 20 practices to learn a new offense or a new defense,” Smithley said. “The opportunity for them to have another semester to get acclimated to learn the playbook, I think they are all-embracing it greatly.”

This half-season in the spring is going to be considered as a full competitive season, which means two things. First, if a team plays 50 percent or less of the maximum number of contests within that sport, then every member of that team retains a full season of eligibility. In other words, each Waynesburg football player is going to be fifth-year eligible.

Second, although the season is being played in the spring until April 23, this means that the offseason will only be three and a half months long. Football will return to the fall in 2021, which is weighing in on the decision making for Smithley this spring.

“We’re going to try to win every game,” Smithley said. “I also think that there’s some strategy to be played in this thing on not having a full year of recovery time before playing another season.” 

Some of these considerations deal with risking the starters getting injured and wondering how much playing time the younger players will get.

“We’re going to make the best decisions to help our program in the short term,” Smithley said, “but also have the outlook of the long term involved in that plan as well.”