Huskies Open at Cal and Close at Oregon in New Pac-12 Football Schedule
The University of Washington football team will open its long-delayed season at California on Nov. 7 and close at Oregon on Dec. 12 in a seven-game schedule that will provide the Huskies with their least amount of games in 77 years.
The Pac-12, for unknown reasons, released the restored conference schedule at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Because of the early hour, there was no immediate player reaction on social media.
UW coach Jimmy Lake earlier in the week had guessed the new pandemic-limited schedule would be released in five days. It took four.
After the Huskies open with Cal, they return for consecutive home games against Oregon State on Nov. 14 and Arizona on Nov. 21 — their lone divisional crossover game.
The UW will travel to Pullman on Thanksgiving week to face Washington State on Friday, Nov. 27, a date set aside for all conference rivalry games.
The Huskies play their final home game against Stanford on Dec. 5 and close out with a road game against Oregon in Eugene on Dec. 12.
The conference championship game will be held on Friday, Dec. 18, which will take place on a campus site.
All teams that don't play for the title will receive another crossover game against a matching opponent in the standings, such as division runner-up against division runner-up.
The UW-Cal game is the only one that would typically require a chartered flight to travel the 800 miles to Berkeley, California. The Huskies might use multiple busses to socially distance in order to reach Pullman and Eugene.
The Huskies and the Bears played in Seattle 13 months ago in a game that was delayed by a lightning storm and ended after 1 a.m.
All Pac-12 games will be televised in some manner on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FOX or FS1.
No fans will be permitted at any Pac-12 games.
With this the third schedule for 2020, the Huskies went from opening the season on Sept. 5 against Michigan to hosting their first game against Stanford on Sept. 26 to playing their opener at Cal two months after the original start date.
The last time the Huskies played so few games was 1943, during the height of World War II, when they had just five outings -- three at home, one in Spokane and the Rose Bowl.
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