The California Golden Bears football team will play their games against the USC Trojans and Oregon Ducks in nationally televised contests in 2011. That’s the non-surprising part, as Cal-Oregon and Cal-USC games are generally plum matchups that have been featured on ABC over the years.
The only difference is that this season, Cal will be playing their games on Thursday Night. Cal football will be playing the first two Thursday Night football contests on ESPN for the newly-minted Pac-12 conference. They will trek up to Autzen Stadium (a place they’ve only won once out of four times in the Jeff Tedford era) to face Oregon on October 6th for a 6 PM PT kickoff. Then they will head back to their temporary environs of AT&T Park the next Thursday to face off with their longstanding SoCal rivals in San Francisco; kickoff will also be at 6 PM.
It will not be an easy start to Cal’s conference schedule (they also have a road date at Washington before playing these two games), but they will definitely have a chance to showcase their talents to the rest of the nation and make their Pac-12 inaugural statement.