First Kickoff Times Announced for UCLA Football
Get ready for some Rose Bowl breakfasts in September!
The Pac-12 began announcing kickoff times for the early set of games today, which means we finally know when the 2022 UCLA Bruins football season will officially kick off.
You’re reading that Ben Bolch tweet right; three early day games to start the year. The Bruins will kick off against Bowling Green at 11:30 A.M. on September 3, followed by a 2:00 P.M. kickoff on September 10 against Alabama State. The non-conference schedule finishes up on September 17 when the Bruins face South Alabama at 11:00 A.M. All three games will be carried on the Pac-12 Network.
The choice to put UCLA in three day games is an interesting one, to say the least. The Bruins are one of two conference teams to avoid a 7:00 PM or later kickoff in the first three weeks, and unlike UC Berkeley they won’t be shuttled off to a regional version of the Pac-12 Network to accommodate that fact. Realistically, UCLA’s schedule is not strong enough to justify avoiding the late window, but here we are. It is also interesting but not surprising that the Alabama State game is getting the preferential treatment among those three games; besides being UCLA’s first game against an FCS team ever, UCLA is likely counting on a higher fan attendance for that game (in large part due to the appeal of an HBCU marching band gracing the Rose Bowl) and is positioning it accordingly.
Still, three early day games is a brutal draw for the tailgating crowd, myself included. For all the talk my last article about UCLA football drew regarding the Rose Bowl, I can’t imagine those games will draw much of a crowd, which means UCLA is set up to once again be a laughingstock of the college football world for a few hours.
The conference also announced start times for the two Friday games. Again the Bruins are stuck with a brutal timeslot for their post-Thanksgiving clash with UC Berkeley to end the year (though at least that’s an away game so the tailgate is secured), and the expected 7:30 P.M. kickoff time for the first conference game against Washington. Interestingly enough, both of those games are in prime TV slots, with the Washington game being on ESPN while the UC Berkeley game grabbing a Fox slot.
Go Bruins!
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If we were competitive I'd worry about strength of schedule, but alas, that is just theoretical talk at this point with Chip <sigh...>
I fear we are less of a laughingstock and more of an afterthought - or a neverthought - in the first place.
And while I'm all for playing an HBCU, I'm also kind of sad to see our streak of never playing an FCS/D-II school end. Notre Dame will be the only remaining school but they have an FCS scheduled in 2023. But I guess if Almighty Bama can play them every year, one in our history is still pretty good.