UCLA has removed two of college football's biggest teams from its upcoming football schedule and will face a more familiar rival.
Southeastern Conference powerhouses Georgia and Auburn will be gone.
Enter former Pac-12 Conference rivals Utah and California, who joined the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conferences, respectively, following UCLA's move to the Big Ten. Now they'll be non-conference opponents that need no introduction.
UCLA will face Utah in the Rose Bowl in 2025 and at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City in 2030. The Bruins will face UC at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley in 2026 and 2028 and in the Rose Bowl in 2027 and 2029.
Those games replace UCLA's scheduled non-conference games against Georgia in 2025 and 2026 and Auburn in 2027 and 2028, which were canceled by mutual agreement between the schools.
From UCLA's perspective, the schedule change has several advantages: Notably, it reduces the travel burden for teams that play in inter-conference teams, it allows the Bruins to revive a rivalry with the University of California that has existed since 1933, it helps recruit players in Northern California, and it allows UCLA fans in the Bay Area to regularly watch the team without having to travel to Pasadena.
The series with UCLA is not expected to have any impact on the $10 million annual “calimony” payments that UCLA will make to subsidize the sister school's Golden Bears athletic department for the next three years, but the schedule change could be a goodwill gesture to foster ties between the two schools.
UCLA's non-conference scheduling approach currently features one major conference team and two smaller opponents. In 2025, the Bruins will play Nevada-Las Vegas and New Mexico in addition to Utah. In 2026, UCLA will play San Diego State and Nevada in addition to California. In 2027, the Bruins will play Hawaii and UC Davis in addition to California.
From a competitive standpoint, UCLA doesn't need to add SEC schools to its non-conference schedule because its move to the Big Ten allows it to pack its schedule with enough quality teams. Utah would certainly add depth to the Bruins' schedule, considering it has won the Pac-12 in two of the past three seasons and is expected to immediately compete for the Big 12 championship. Meanwhile, UC hasn't posted a winning season since 2019, but it did beat UCLA 33-7 in the Rose Bowl last season.
Reflecting the strange situation in college sports, the Golden Bears and Bruins will resume their rivalry as members of distant conferences.