Big Ten Conference Announces 2024 Football Schedule
The Bruins will be the first former Pac-12 school to play a Big Ten game when they host Indiana on September 14th.
The Big Ten Conference announced the complete 2024 conference football schedule today.
UCLA will be the first new Big Ten member to play a conference game when the Bruins host the Indiana Hoosiers at the Rose Bowl on September 14, 2024. UCLA’s next conference opponent will be Oregon when the Ducks visit Pasadena on September 28th.
The Bruins open October with a road game in Happy Valley against Penn State on October 5th, followed by a home game against Minnesota on October 12th. UCLA heads back to the East Coast for an October 19th road game in Piscataway, New Jersey against Rutgers.
As the calendar flips to November, the Bruins will be off to a game at Nebraska on November 2nd. That will be followed by a home game, and probably the Homecoming game for next season, against Iowa on November 9th. UCLA’s final road game will be on November 16th when they visit the Huskies in Seattle.
The conference schedule will conclude properly when the Bruins host crosstown rival Southern Cal on November 23rd, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
None of that factors in UCLA’s three non-conference opponents for next season. The Bruins will visit Hawai’i in Week 0 on August 31st and they travel to Baton Rouge to take on LSU on September 21st. Finally, they finish the season with a non-conference game against Fresno State on November 30th.
According to the Big Ten’s announcement, “Selected Saturday games in the 2024 season may be adjusted to select Fridays and other special dates, including Labor Day Sunday and Black Friday. The 2025 football schedule will be announced in the future.”
Here’s UCLA’s 2024 schedule week-by-week:
It’s interesting to note that the Big Ten missed an obvious opportunity to make the Bruins’ travel schedule easier by scheduling both Penn State and Rutgers together in back-to-back weeks in September. This could have minimized travel by having UCLA and Rutgers kickoff the conference schedule on September 7th followed by what would likely have been a bus trip from Jersey to State College, Pennsylvania for a September 14th game against the Nittany Lions.
That kind of scheduling would have allowed the Bruins to just stay on the East Coast for consecutive games rather than return to Los Angeles in between for a home game. In all likelihood, it was probably Rutgers that blew that up because the Scarlet Knights have two non-conference games schedule for those two weeks while Penn State has a bye on September 14th.
Alas, the New Jersey-Pennsylvania combination road trip will have to wait a while. It could happen in 2028 if the Big Ten schedule makers can get creative. The good news is that Rutgers has not announced any non-conference games for that season, according to NJ.com, while Penn State has only scheduled Syracuse so far and that game will occur on September 9, 2024. So, the Big Ten could send the Bruins East that year with a game at Rutgers on September 9th and at Penn State on September 16th.
It will be interesting to see if that happens and what other future Big Ten schedules look like.
Go Bruins!!!
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Tough schedule. Will need the two byes.
It looks brutal. 6-6 at best. 4-8 is a possibility...