Thursday, January 10, 2013
If there's one thing that can be gleaned from the freshly released 2013 football schedule for the University of Arizona, it's this: us fans are going to be spending A LOT of time on campus in November.
The Pac-12 Conference formally announced the entire league's schedule today, ranging from a pair of games on Thursday, Aug. 29 all the way through the conference title game Dec. 12 at (!!!!) the home site of whichever division champ has a better record.
In between the UA will host six games at the newly renovated Arizona Stadium, starting with the bi-annual visit from Northern Arizona on Aug. 31.
The next home game is Sept. 14 against Texas-San Antonio, a likely gimme of a contest that many of the Wildcat fans who went to Las Vegas the weekend before for the UA-UNLV game can skip as part of the post-road trip liver and wallet recovery plan.
After that, though, it'll be quite a while before the Wildcats are home. More than a month, in fact.
Unlike in 2012, where Arizona played seemingly all of September and October at home (eight home games and only four road contests will do that), the UA will have road games Sept. 28 at Washington and Oct. 10 — a Thursday — at USC before playing its first home Pac-12 game Oct. 19 against Utah.
Then it's two more road games (four out of five, for those scoring at home) Oct. 26 at Colorado and Nov. 2 at California before the Wildcats plant roots at home for the next three weekends.
The UA will host UCLA (Nov. 9), Washington State (Nov. 16) and Oregon (Oct. 23) in succession before finishing up Nov. 30 at Arizona State. Plans call for the UCLA game to be the Homecoming contest, which is strange since you normally try to schedule a gimme (see 2012 version vs. Colorado) and UCLA is expected to be WAY better than lowly Wazzu, who just happens to be coming to Tucson the next weekend.
No TV or kickoff information was released, though the Pac-12 did say that every game at a conference site would be on some form of national television, if the Pac-12 Network really counts for that without having a deal with DirectTV.
Because TV decides all when it comes to college football, though, don't be surprised if several of the UA's home games end up having weird, jacked up kickoff times like this past year. That means weird crap like 11:30 a.m. starts for Homecoming games or 8:30 p.m. starts to get the late national window on ESPN.
Deal with it, folks. Oh, and plan your non-football activities for road game weekends, or during the UA's two off Saturdays (Sept. 21 and Oct. 5).
Tags: UA football , Wildcat football , schedule , NAU , loooong road trips