The thursday games are always proceeded by a bye week, Friday is more uncertain
The real issue here is the date of the Pitt game. Agree, it is certain we will have a bye on 10/12.
That is week 7 of a 14 week season (15 for the handful of teams that play on week 0).
That means when trying to determine a date for the second bye, you have to either
a) play the first 6 weeks of the season with no bye, take bye 1 on week 7, play Pitt on week 8 and then fit bye week 2 into the last 6 weeks of the season. Which means best case you play 2 games in a row after Pitt, take a bye and play the last 3 weeks of the season or play 4 games in a row (counting Pitt), take bye 2 on week 12 and play weeks 13 and 14.
In a two bye season, you want to play 4 games, take your first byte, play 4 more games, take your second bye, then play your last 4 games. But you can’t do that with everyone or the conference will have no games in week 5 and week 10.
The teams that play on week 0 get 3 byes so they ideally would play 3 games, take a bye, play 3 games, take a bye, play 3, take a bye and play 3 more. So they could take their byes on weeks 3, 7 and 11,
But someone needs to get stuck taking byes at bad times and we were one of those teams this year. Pitt is as well.
This is why it would have beven so much better had we scheduled Hawaii week 0. We could have limited the damage of getting a short week in week 8 and getting forced to take a bye in week 7,
Bottom line, we need to play a 6 game stretch this season with no byes. And fit 2 byes into half a season.
I would rather play 6 games in a row at the start of the year than take a bye in week 2, It is way too early and does us no good then.
If the ACC wanted to do us a solid, they should schedule the Cal game for 11/30. Then we don’t have to deal with the time zone recovery issue this year. But I think they will want to schedule Cal to play Stanford then. I assume it is a rivalry game that is always played that weekend.