Pac-12 Releases 2022 Schedule, UCLA Football’s Full Slate Cemented
The Bruins have their slate for next season officially locked in.
The Pac-12 released each team's conference schedules Thursday morning, completing the full picture of what's coming down the pipe for UCLA football and its foes in 2022. The nonconference schedule had already been penciled in, with three September home games against Bowling Green, Alabama State and South Alabama already cemented.
With the Pac-12's announcement, it becomes clear that the rotation has skipped over the planned 2020 matchups rather than delaying it or moving them, which means UCLA is once again playing Washington and Oregon instead of Washington State and Oregon State, who they were supposed to face in the pandemic-shortened season.
Weeks 1, 2 and 3 mark the Bruins' lightest nonconference slate in years, as they aren't set to face off against a single Power Five program. The game against Alabama State will also signify an end to the program's streak of never playing an FCS opponent over the past 100 years, leaving Notre Dame as the last team standing.
The Falcons, Hornets and Jaguars went a combined 14-21 in 2021, with none of them even posting winning records inside of their smaller conferences. In fact, Bowling Green and Alabama State haven't finished over .500 since 2015, while South Alabama hasn't done so at all in its 10 years at the FBS level.
All three teams will be making the trip to the Rose Bowl, meaning UCLA will go over four years without playing a nonconference game on the road. The last time they did so with on Aug. 29, 2019, versus Cincinnati, and they won't do it again until Sept. 9, 2023 against San Diego State. The next time the Bruins are set to leave Southern California for a nonconference game isn't until 2024, when they'll play at Hawaii and at LSU.
The end of September marks the start of conference play for UCLA, and it will open with a road game against Colorado, as was the case in both 2018 and 2020. The Bruins lost both of those games, and they haven't beaten the Buffaloes in Boulder since 2014.
Washington will visit UCLA the following week, having beat the Bruins in the Rose Bowl in 2018. The Huskies had lost their previous eight contests as a visitor in the Rose Bowl, though, so the Bruins may be a chance to best them on their home turf. Former Fresno State coach Kalen DeBoer is now the leading man in Seattle though, and he led the Bulldogs to wins over UCLA at the Rose Bowl in both 2018 and 2021.
The Bruins catch Utah at home, not having beat the now-defending Pac-12 champions regardless of location since 2015. Since the Utes joined the conference in 2011, they are 7-3 against the Bruins and 3-1 in the series when they are on the road.
A Week 7 bye is up next for the blue and gold, and it will be their only "improvement week" of the season.
UCLA will play Oregon in Eugene with former Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning now the coach for the Ducks. A home game against Stanford on Oct. 29 is immediately followed up by a road trip to Arizona State, where the Bruins won in 2020 but lost in 2018, and then they'll return home to face Arizona on Nov. 12.
The year is once again bookended by two rivalry games – at home against USC and on the road versus Cal.
Stanford has won the last six in the Rose Bowl and USC has won two of its last three in the Rose Bowl, even before hiring Oklahoma's Lincoln Riley earlier this offseason. While the homefield advantage may not have much recent precedence, the same can be said for the game against the Golden Bears, since the Bruins have won two of their last three in Berkeley.
Here is UCLA's full 2022 schedule, with the eight home games bolded and the four away games italicized:
Sept. 3: vs. Bowling Green
Sept. 10: vs. Alabama State
Sept. 17: vs. South Alabama
Sept. 24: at Colorado
Oct. 1: vs. Washington
Oct. 8: vs. Utah
Oct. 22: at Oregon
Oct. 29: vs. Stanford
Nov. 5: at Arizona State
Nov. 12: vs. Arizona
Nov. 19: vs. USC
Nov. 25 (Fri): at Cal
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