UCLA Football: Rutgers Cancels Football Series Against the Bruins

Two days, two UCLA Bruins football news items related to New Jersey. Yesterday, it was good news when TE Matt Alaimo announced his commitment to UCLA’s 2018 recruiting class.

Today, UCLA has announced that, as of last week, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights have officially cancelled the home-and-home series the schools were scheduled to play in 2020 and 2021. The games had already been pushed back from their original dates to accommodate Rutgers’ series against the University of Washington. UCLA had originally been scheduled to play Rutgers in Piscataway, NJ in 2016 and at the Rose Bowl in 2017.

According to a UCLA press release, UCLA tried to keep the games by offering to flip the order of the games, but Rutgers still decided to cancel.

NJ.com is reporting that Rutgers has already replaced the games against UCLA on their schedule with a home-and-home series against Syracuse. The games were originally scheduled in 2009 when Greg Schiano was Rutgers’ head coach and he left the school in 2011 to become the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The article adds that current head coach Chris Ash “has placed an emphasis on playing regional non-conference rivals in order to energize fan turnout and excitement, particularly at home games.”

Yeah, that and the fact that Rutgers doesn’t want to get throttled by Chip Kelly and the Bruins the way they got thrashed by Chris Petersen and the Huskies the past two seasons. Frankly, you can’t blame them. These games were marked as wins from the moment they were scheduled in 2009 when Rick Neuheisel was coaching UCLA and they would have been wins regardless of who was coaching the Bruins when they were played.

Bruin fans will now be deprived of spending an afternoon in central New Jersey and the rest of the weekend in the New York City area. So, cancel those Broadway tickets for that weekend.

Rutgers will have to pay UCLA a termination fee of $500,000 for cancelling the series.

According to UCLA’s announcement, the Bruins will now look to replace those two games.

Future UCLA Schedules

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

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

2020
Sept. 5 - TBD
Sept. 12 - TBD
Sept. 19 - at San Diego State

2021
Sept. 4 - LSU
Sept. 11 - TBD
Sept. 18 - Fresno State

2022
Sept. 3 - Bowling Green
Sept. 10 - at Michigan
Sept. 17 - South Alabama

2023
Sept. 2 - Michigan
Sept. 9 - at San Diego State
Sept. 16 - Coastal Carolina

2024
Aug. 31 - at LSU
Sept. 7 - UNLV
Sept. 14 - Fresno State

2025
Aug. 30 - Georgia
Sept. 6 - at UNLV
Sept. 13 - New Mexico

2026
Sept. 5 - at Georgia
Sept. 12 - San Diego State
Sept. 19 - TBD

2029
Sept. 15 - Wisconsin

2030
Sept. 7 - at Wisconsin


Go Bruins!!!