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BOULDER — The Pac-12 Conference released its schedule Tuesday for conference football games for the 2019 season, with University of Colorado set to play three Friday night games for the second straight year and the home schedule highlighted by the return of two longtime rivals traveling to Boulder.
Colorado will once again open the season against Colorado State in Denver in the Rocky Mountain Showdown at Sports Authority Field on Friday, Aug. 30. CU will serve as the home team for this, the 10th consecutive and at present, the final game in the series to played in Denver. The next three games in the series are set for campus sites, in Fort Collins in 2020 and 2024 and in Boulder in 2023. It will mark the 21st time the Rams will be CU’s season opening opponent since the rivalry resumed after a 25-year dormancy in 1983.
The Buffaloes’ home opener follows on Saturday, Sept. 7, when former conference rival Nebraska visits Folsom Field for the first time since 2009. The Huskers will be the first former Big 12 Conference school to appear on CU’s home schedule since 2010, its last year in the league. Then on the next Saturday, Air Force will roll up Interstate 25 and U.S. 36 into Boulder for the first time in 46 years; the two last met at Folsom in 1973 and anywhere in 1974 at the Academy.
After opening Pac-12 league play at home in four of the last five years, the Buffaloes will travel to Tempe to take on Arizona State on Sept. 21, the first time CU opens conference play away from home in the Copper state. The first of two bye weeks follow (there are 14 Saturdays in the 2019 schedule window), and on Oct. 5, Arizona will visit Boulder in what will be CU’s annual Family Weekend affair.
Colorado then has the annual back-to-back road games within the league grind, first playing at Oregon on Friday night, Oct. 11, and then returning to the Pacific Northwest the following Saturday (Oct. 19) to face Washington State in Pullman. CU caps off the month of October with a nationally televised Friday night contest on ESPN against USC on the 25th.
The Buffaloes open November in Pasadena against UCLA at Rose Bowl Stadium (Nov. 2). The next two on the docket are in Boulder, against Stanford (Nov. 9; Homecoming) and Washington (Nov. 23); they are bookended around the second bye of the season on Nov. 16. Colorado will finish the regular season on the road at Utah on Nov. 30, as the Buffs and Utes will again close the season against each other after a one-year hiatus due to a schedule quirk.
(The opponent “misses” in conference play the next two seasons are California and Oregon State.)
“This is one of our most attractive home schedules in recent memory,” CU athletic director Rick George said. “Opening with resumed rivalries against Nebraska and Air Force, closing with defending Pac-12 champion Washington with those three sandwiched around Arizona, USC and Stanford. It makes for one exciting season ticket at Folsom Field.”
There is no FCS (Football Championship Series) opponent on the schedule for just the second time since 2011, and the 2019 home schedule rivals two of the previous best in CU annals, 1984 (Michigan State, UCLA, Iowa State, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma) and 2003 (UCLA, Washington State, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska). A five game slate in 1970 also comes close (Penn State, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas).
Television game selections and start times for the first three weeks of the season will be known by June 1, with all remaining games from Sept. 21 through the final week of the regular season to be made 12- or six-days in advance per contractual agreements with the Pac-12’s television partners, ESPN, FOX and the Pac-12 Networks.