UCLA Football, Pittsburgh Set to Face Off at Sun Bowl in El Paso
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The Bruins have booked their postseason destination.
No. 18 UCLA football (9-3, 6-3 Pac-12) was picked to take on Pittsburgh (8-4, 5-3 ACC) in the 2022 Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl on Sunday. The game will take place in El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 30.
This marks the Bruins' fifth trip to the Sun Bowl, four of which have occurred since the turn of the century.
UCLA scrapped out a 6-3 win over Illinois in the 1993 Sun Bowl, marking eight consecutive bowl wins for the program. It took until 2000 for the team to return to El Paso, and they lost 21-20 to Wisconsin.
The Bruins rebounded when they made it back in 2003, beating Northwestern in a 50-38 shootout. The last time the program accepted an invitation to the Sun Bowl was 2013, and they capitalized with a 42-12 win over Virginia Tech.
A victory at the 2022 rendition of the game would get UCLA to the 10-win mark for the first time since 2014 and the first time of the Chip Kelly era.
The Bruins only qualified for one bowl game in Kelly’s first four years, and they were ultimately unable to compete in the 2021 Holiday Bowl due to COVID-19 protocols. The program has not won a bowl game since the end of the 2014 season.
UCLA is 16-19-1 in bowl games all time.
Pitt, meanwhile, is 14-22 in bowls and has plenty of its own experience at the Sun Bowl. The Panthers won the 1975 and 1989 Sun Bowls, but lost to Oregon State and Stanford in 2008 and 2018, respectively.
In 2022, Pitt took Tennessee to overtime in September before ultimately losing, and they opened the season 4-4. The Panthers come into the postseason riding a four-game winning streak, though, highlighted by wins over Syracuse and Miami (FL).
UCLA has played Pitt 14 times, with the all-time series dating back to 1958. The schools played every year from 1958 to 1971, with the Bruins winning seven of the last eight, but they have never faced off on a neutral site.
The showdown between the Bruins and Panthers will kick off at 11 a.m. PT and will be broadcast on CBS.
With so many of UCLA’s seniors and graduates potentially looking to make the jump to the NFL this offseason, it remains to be seen if any will opt out in order to preserve their health ahead of the draft. There is also the matter of the transfer portal, which will officially open Monday.
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