2021 UCLA Football Schedule Announced
2021 UCLA Football Schedule Announced
The Bruins will play seven games at home in the Rose Bowl this season, but will anyone be able to attend?
The Pac-12 Conference officially announced the 2021 football schedules yesterday.
UCLA opens the season with three home non-conference games against Hawai’i, LSU and Fresno State. The game against LSU will be the first meeting ever between the two schools.
The Bruins will avoid having to play an awful Thursday or Friday night game this season. That may be one of the best things about this schedule. There are seven home games and not one of them will force us to drive through Friday night traffic to get to Pasadena.
If there is a negative to it, it comes during conference play. When conference play begins, UCLA heads north to take on Stanford and then returns home to play the Sun Devils. Three of the next four games are on the road. The Bruins visit Arizona on October 9th, Washington on October 16th and, after a week at home against Oregon, they visit Utah on October 30th. The only two ways that stretch could be worse would be if UCLA had to visit Eugene instead of Tucson or if the Utah game was in Salt Lake in November.
Speaking of November, the Bruins won’t leave LA County during the entire month. Following a bye on November 6th, UCLA hosts the Colorado Buffaloes, then visit Southern Cal and face UC Berkeley the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
All times and TV broadcast schedules will be determined at a later date. Here’s the complete 2021 schedule:
2021 UCLA Football Schedule
Aug. 28 – Hawai’i
Sept. 4 – LSU
Sept. 18 – Fresno State
Sept. 25 – at Stanford
Oct. 2 – Arizona State
Oct. 9 – at Arizona
Oct. 16 – at Washington
Oct. 23 – Oregon
Oct. 30 – at Utah
Nov. 13 – Colorado
Nov. 20 – at Southern Cal
Nov. 27 – UC Berkeley
Speaking of football schedules, I want to take a moment to express disappointment in the decision by the Athletic Department to schedule games in 2022 and 2023 with Alabama State and North Carolina Central.
I understand why it will be special for these HBCUs to be able to play a game in the Rose Bowl and I even look forward to the halftime shows put on by the “The Mighty Marching Hornets” and “The Sound Machine Marching Band.” Those will certainly be an event all their own as those bands have excellent reputations.
My disappointment stems from the fact that UCLA has been one of three teams in college football to never play an FBS team. In fact, it looked like UCLA and Notre Dame would be the last two FCS teams to never play an FBS team as Southern Cal had scheduled UC Davis for this year, but that game got cancelled in favor of a game against San Jose State.
Now, the Bruins will look to be the ones to leave this exclusive club first and that just seems wrong.
Go Bruins!
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I share your sentiments, Joe. UCLA never having played a FCS/Division II team was always a badge of honor for the UCLA football program, distancing itself from certain programs (Cough . . . SEC . . Cough) who routinely play one or more of these games every season. It is disappointing to see it happen. I imagine Michigan wimping out on the home and away series (Harbaugh is a jackwagon) and UCLA having a difficult time finding replacement games with already congested schedules helped make this occur. That having been said, if we are to lose this distinction, I am glad that it is against HBCUs considering UCLA's glorious history with legendary black athletes (Robinson, Alcindor/Abdul-Jabbar, Ashe, Joyner-Kersee, Rafer Johnson, to name a few), rather than just any other FCS team.