ACC Releases 2024 Football Schedule: Florida State Is Cal's First ACC Opponent
Cal's very first opponent in Atlantic Coast Conference football will be Florida State, the team that thought it should have been in the College Football Playoff.
The ACC released its 2024 football schedule on Wednesday with dates and sites for all conference games.
Cal’s schedule for 2024, including its eight ACC games, is now complete, and the Bears' conference play will begin with a trip to Tallahassee, Florida, for a September 21, 2024 game against Florida State, the 2023 ACC champion that went through the regular season undefeated and was ranked No. 5 in the final CFB rankings.
The travel to the East Coast was one of the concerns regarding Cal's move to the ACC. Tallahassee is 2,200 miles from Berkeley and requires a five-hour flight.
Cal's first home game against an ACC foe will be an October 5 game against Miami, which is expected to be an ACC contender next season.
One interesting note is that Cal's 2024 nonconference game against Oregon State was originally scheduled to be played September 28, but the date of that home game has been switched to October 26.
The Golden Bears will continue to play Stanford every year, and in 2024 Cal will host Stanford on November 23. It will not be the final game of the season as the Bears will travel to another new ACC member, SMU, for a game on November 30.
Cal's ACC home game are Oct. 5 against Miami, October 19 against North Carolina State, November 16 against Syracuse and November 23 against Stanford. The Bears ACC road games will be a September 21 game against Florida State, an October 12 game against Pittsburgh, a November 8 game against Wake Forest and a November 30 game against SMU.
All of Cal's 2024 games are scheduled for Saturdays, except for the Friday, November 8 game against Wake Forest
Here is Cal's entire 2024 football schedule, with Cal home games in bold. (Starting times will be determined at a later date):
The ACC championship game is scheduled for December 7
Here is the schedule for all 17 ACC teams:
Cal already knew it would have home games Miami, North Carolina State, Stanford and Syracuse and road games against Florida State, Pittsburgh, SMU and Wake Forest. But the Bears did not know when each of those games would be played. They found out Tuesday that Cal’s game at Wake Forest will be played on Friday, November 8, but none of the other dates was known until Wednesday.
Cal also already knew that its first four games of 2024 – all against nonconference opponents – would be UC Davis (at home August 31), Auburn (on the road September 7), San Diego State (home, September 14) and Oregon State (home, October 26), although the ACC schedules revealed Wednesday also included those games.
The ACC will be a 17-team conference in 2024, so Cal will face only half of the conference’s teams next fall.
Click here for a list Cal’s ACC opponents and sites for each of the next seven years, although the dates for games in 2025 through 2030 have not been set.
Cover photo by Scott Taetsch, USA TODAY Sports
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