UCLA Football Schedules Georgia, Cincinnati and South Alabama

One of the things I love about college football is how the schedules are set years in advance. It means that fans are not waiting to find out who the nonconference opponents will be each and every year.

This morning, UCLA announced that they have added three opponents to the future schedule.

The team has added a home-and-home series with Georgia in 2025 and 2026 and with Cincinnati in 2018 and 2019. Additionally, the team has scheduled a home game against South Alabama in 2022.

The games against Georgia continue the trend of playing SEC schools. The Bruins will play Texas A&M in 2016 and 2017. They've also scheduled games against LSU for 2021 and 2024.

UCLA holds an 0-2 record against the Georgia Bulldogs losing to them in the 1942-43 Rose Bowl and in Athens in 1983. They've never played Cincinnati or South Alabama.

Not knowing a lot about South Alabama, I had to do a double-check that they are an FBS school. Sure enough, they play in the Sun Belt Conference which is an FBS conference.

Why is that important to Bruin fans? Because it means that UCLA remains one of three FBS schools never to have played a non-FBS opponent.

Of course, if I had read the entire release on the official site, rather than skipping down to the list of future opponents, I would have seen that the release mentions that UCLA is still in that exclusive club with Notre Dame and Just$c.

In other scheduling news, UCLA and San Diego State have moved the date of their 2019 game from August 31st to September 7th to allow UCLA to play Cincinnati.

The only downside to this announcement is that it doesn't include any games against Ole Miss. The folks at RedCupRebellion were trying to get their AD (and former UCLA Senior Associate AD) Ross Bjork to schedule a home-and-home while he was in Los Angeles last month for the Baseball Regional. Here's hoping that Ole Miss and UCLA can work out a home-and-home series because it would be great to have the Ole Miss fans visit the Rose Bowl and I know Bruin fans will love to make a trip down to The Grove as the tailgating there is supposed to be incredible!

As we examine the future schedule, circle the 2018 season on your calendar for several reasons. That year could be Josh Rosen's senior (or redshirt junior) year (if he doesn't turn pro early). But that's not the only reason to circle it. It's also a season where we will play seven home games. We will have our usual even year 5 Pac-12 home games, but Cincinnati and Fresno State make seven. It's been proven frequently that teams with seven home games are usually in a better position to play for the national championship than teams with 6 or less home games.

Certainly, Oklahoma will be no slouch nor will any team on that year's schedule, but playing 7 at the Rose Bowl should help give our team an edge.

Of course, that isn't meant to lower expectations between now and then. Coach Mora and staff need to get over the hump by beating Stanford and playing in the P12CG a lot sooner than 2018.

Here's the updated list of UCLA Football's future non-conference schedules:

2016
Sept. 3 - @ Texas A&M
Sept. 10 - UNLV
Sept. 17 - @ BYU

2017
Sept. 2 - Texas A&M
Sept. 9 - Hawai’i
Sept. 16 - @ Memphis

2018
Sept. 1 - Cincinnati
Sept. 8 - @ Oklahoma
Sept. 15 - Fresno State

2019
Aug. 31 - @ Cincinnati
Sept. 7 - San Diego State
Sept. 14 - Oklahoma

2020
Sept. 5 - Rutgers
Sept. 12 - TBD
Sept. 19 - @ San Diego State

2021
Sept. 4 - LSU
Sept. 11 - @ Rutgers
Sept. 18 - TBD

2022
Sept. 3 - TBD
Sept. 10 - @ Michigan
Sept. 17 - South Alabama

2023
Sept. 2 - Michigan
Sept. 9 - TBD
Sept. 16 - TBD

2024
Aug. 31 - @ LSU
Sept. 7 - TBD
Sept. 14 - TBD

2025
Aug. 30 - Georgia
Sept. 6 - TBD
Sept. 13 - TBD

2026
Sept. 5 - @ Georgia
Sept. 12 - TBD
Sept. 19 - TBD

Go Bruins!!!