Cal and Oregon State schedule home-and-home, finalizing 2024 non-conference schedule
Cal will play UC Davis, Oregon State and San Diego State at home, and will also travel to Auburn.
The California Golden Bears can’t escape the Oregon State Beavers.
Cal and Oregon State announced a home-and-home last month. Cal will host the Beavers in Berkeley on September 28. The Bears will then make a return trip to Corvallis on August 30, 2025.
The game next year was previously occupied by a Cal-UNLV matchup in Berkeley. With Cal also travelling to San Diego State in 2025, it might behoove the Bears to move one of those two Mountain West matchups and fill in their schedule with an FCS home game to get to seven home games.
(If they care what I think, moving the San Diego State road game to 2027 would be ideal for optimizing a seven game home slate for Cal’s first four seasons in the ACC—aside from 2026, but two of those trips are Florida, and Vegas (UNLV) Labor Day weekend, and I’m sure Cal fans will travel well).
Oregon State will have a brand new look. The Beavers lost Jonathan Smith and the bulk of their coaching staff to Michigan State, leaving defensive coordinator Trent Bray to take over at the helm. The Beavers have lost dozens of players to the transfer portal and the draft, although they did gain quarterback Gevani McCoy, who performed well against Cal for a half last year.
The SEC schedule was also announced, and Auburn pencilled in their home date with Cal for September 7th.
This means Cal’s non-conference schedule is 99% locked datewise.
Cal will travel to Auburn on September 7th.
Cal then plays Oregon State on September 28th. It remains to be seen if the Bears will have a bye week or play an ACC matchup in-between.
The ACC schedule will be officially released on January 31, 2024 on the ACC Network at 3 PM Pacific. Here are the list of opponents for Cal.
Home: UC Davis, San Diego State, Oregon State, Syracuse, NC State, Miami, Stanford
Away: Auburn, Florida State, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, SMU
Cal fans: Be wary of this schedule. OSU may be "wounded" but they play great defense and they just landed a four star wideout and I expect them to keep playing the same kind of football (rock-solid defense, grind-it-out running game) that has given us so many problems in the past. . SDSU has historically played Cal very tough and Auburn has reloaded via recruiting (currently has the #8 ranked class) and don't forget, they almost beat Alabama. Next year's schedule may prove to be just as brutal as this year's schedule since we have to play Miami and FSU, which are hardly slouch teams. Football gods, pray for us.
Idiocy. I'm sure Vanderbilt or Indiana or whoever would welcome a trip out west.