Cal to start 2024 season vs. UC Davis on Saturday, August 31

The ACC is beginning their 2024 football schedule announcement and Cal's season opener was officially announced.

The ACC is doing a slow drip of the 2024 football schedule, and they started with the Week 1 announcement. Cal’s season opener still looks fairly normal—they will play on Saturday against a local FCS program, in this case UC Davis.

Credit: Cal Football

Here is the full ACC schedule for Week 1:

Credit: ACC

No times or TV If I had to guess, nearly all the FBS vs. FCS games will at best get ACC Network treatment.

Since there are four FCS/FBS games that Saturday, there’s a good chance that Cal and UC Davis could end up in the Saturday night primetime window on the ACC Network. An ACC August 31st schedule like

• Louisville vs. Austin Peay, 9 am Pacific

• Virginia vs. Richmond: 12:30 pm

• SMU vs. Houston Christian: 4 pm

• Cal vs. UC Davis: 7:30 pm

Isn’t out of the ordinary.

I think there is a possibility as well that the Cal athletic department opts for an afternoon kickoff with less TV carriage, like ACC Network Extra or a streaming game on ESPN+ that would lead to higher fan attendance.

Thursday/Friday night games are expected to be announced later today, with the full schedule dropping tomorrow. Cal’s schedule will include Oregon State, San Diego State and a road trip to Auburn in non-conference play. Their ACC opponents will be Stanford, Syracuse, Miami and NC State at home, and Florida State, Pitt, Wake Forest and SMU on the road.