UCLA Football Adds Cincinnati Home-And-Home, A Look At The Other Future Non-Conference Games

Last week UCLA Football announced that they will be adding the Cincinnati Bearcats to the non-conference schedule in 2018 and 2019. The series will start with Cincinnati visiting UCLA at the Rose Bowl in 2018 while the Bruins travel to Cincinnati, Ohio in 2019.

Since head coach Jim Mora has taken over at UCLA, he has done a lot to try to boost the image of the program, one of those strategies included thickening up their future non-conference schedules with elite programs such as LSU, Oklahoma, Michigan and Texas A&M.

UCLA Bruins

In this age of the College Football Playoffs where strength of schedules are everything, Mora wants to set UCLA up with a chance to not only take on the best, but prepare for the rigors that go along with the new college football post-season.

That is what makes this match-up questionable. Though Cincinnati has been very successful lately, they hardly seem like the opponent that would make for a marquee match-up with UCLA, especially since they are not from one of the Power 5 conferences. The Bruins have scheduled several games with teams not in the Power 5, but those games are against west coast teams like Nevada, UNLV, San Diego State and Fresno State.

Though it should be a battle on game day, it is still a bit of a head-scratcher to schedule a lower profile game with a team on the other side of the country. Either way, expect Mora to have the Bruins ready for the game that will give them good east coast coverage.

Here is the current list of future non-conference games UCLA has scheduled:

2015 – Virginia (9/5), at UNLV (9/12), BYU (9/19)

2016 – at Texas A&M (9/3), UNLV (9/10), at BYU (9/17)

2017 – Texas A&M (9/2), Hawai’i (9/9), at Memphis (9/16)

2018 – Cincinnati (TBD), at Oklahoma (9/8), Fresno State (9/15)

2019 – San Diego State (8/31), at Cincinnati (TBD), Oklahoma (9/14)

2020 – Rutgers (9/5), at San Diego State (9/19)

2021 – at LSU (9/4), at Rutgers (9/11)

2022 – at Michigan (9/10)

2023 – Michigan (9/2)

2024 – LSU (8/31)

Dates and match-ups are subject to change.