Advertisement

UCLA football schedule: Bruins open season against Karl Dorrell and Colorado

UCLA coach Chip Kelly walks the sideline during a game against Utah at the Rose Bowl in 2018.
UCLA coach Chip Kelly walks the sideline during a game against Utah at the Rose Bowl in October 2018.
(John McCoy / Getty Images)
Share via

UCLA will be greeted by a familiar face in its football opener as part of a most unusual season. Call it the Karl Dorrell Bowl.

The new Colorado coach will welcome the Bruins to Boulder when the teams kick off the 2020 season on Nov. 7 at Folsom Field. Dorrell coached at UCLA from 2003-07, compiling a 35-27 record that included a 10-2 season in 2005 but also plenty of indifference from Bruins fans over a slew of six- and seven-win seasons.

UCLA’s schedule that was released Saturday also included some oddities: The Bruins won’t face Stanford for the first time since 1945, when the game was called off because of World War II, or California for the first time since 1932, the year before the series started.

Advertisement

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced UCLA’s event into a virtual format. But organizers are hoping for record attendance and money raised.

The schedule makers didn’t do UCLA any favors by slotting the Bruins’ one Pac-12 divisional crossover game against Oregon, a favorite to win the conference. UCLA will face the Ducks on Nov. 20 at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Ore., after not originally having them on a schedule that has been revised twice because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UCLA will play two of the Pac-12’s eight Friday games, including the Bruins’ home opener against Utah on Nov. 13. UCLA’s other two games at the Rose Bowl will be against Arizona on Nov. 28 and USC on Dec. 12. The crosstown rivalry game will tie the record for the latest the teams have met in a season, the Bruins and Trojans also having faced one another on that date in 1942.

The Bruins’ remaining game will be at Arizona State on Nov. 28.

Advertisement

All six of the Bruins’ scheduled games will be nationally televised. UCLA will play a seventh game, either in the Pac-12 championship game on Dec. 18 at a conference team’s home stadium or as part of five other conference games to be determined on Dec. 19.

No fans will be allowed to attend games this season.

Advertisement