Actually, the schedule has changed. Florida State and Wake Forest had to back out. We did however get Notre Dame to replace wake forest's slot. Looks like for Parent's weekend, it will be "South Dakota".
Before anyone gets upset; realize that Parent's weekend is a big deal for the air force. We have 1/4th of the students who basically have gone through "Shock" for the prior 2 months. Also, because of distances and money, most C1C, C2C, and C3C don't get to see their families except for the holidays and summer break. So parent's weekend is also important for a lot of non-C4C. Having said that, it's really difficult to find FBS football teams that don't mind giving up a home game as their opener. Those that do, expect reciprocity the following year. That's why many, not all, teams schedule an FCS team for the season opener at home. The FCS team is playing "UP" and get paid well, plus it's good exposure for their strength of schedule. Plus, in our case, the academy would prefer to keep a home football game as part of the parent's day weekend. Not to mention the 100 or so players, cheerleaders, band, etc... that would be on the road for the game and not be their to spend time with their families.
The good news is that the academy has been trying and will continue to try to get some FBS teams that are higher quality that don't mind if when we "Pay back" our visit to them, that it's NOT on opening weekend. E.g. in 2015, we currently are schedule for an opener game at home for parent's weekend against Oklahoma State and the next weekend on the road to Cincinnati. The payback for Oklahoma state will be 2 games AT Oklahoma state, but not on opening day. Also, we've been trying hard to play Colorado (Boulder - The Buffaloes). They are only a little over an hour away. Most can commute from the springs to that game. However, Colorado isn't too thrilled. (They probably don't want to get slaughtered).
Anyway; a lot more info than you probably wanted to know. But there's a lot of people, especially the football fanatics, who complain about our opening games to FCS AA teams. They just don't understand how important Parent's weekend is to the academy, students, and parents. Just like the Mountain West Conference has had to deal with us only having 1 MAJOR out of conference game, e.g. Oklahoma this year; because we have a commitment every year for navy and army. Throw in the FCS AA game on opening day, and there's only 1 spot left. Anyway, the team is always trying to schedule high level games. It improves our SOS (Strength of Schedule).
