Why are California and Hawaii opening the college football season in Sydney, Australia?
Cal and Hawaii agreed to be the first teams to play in the game being called the College Football Sydney Cup. It will be played at the 83,500 seat ANZ Stadium. They are expecting to draw a crowd close to 20,000.
In America, the game will kick off at 10 Eastern, and seven Pacific Time on Friday, August 26. In Australia, the game will kick off at noon on Saturday the 27th. It will be on ESPN or ESPN2. The game will be the third All-Time in Australia and the first one since 1987. The stadium was built to host the 2000 Olympics.
For the Cal Bears, they will be coming off of an eight-win season. Obviously, they also will be dealing with the loss of Jared Goff and the majority of his playmakers. It would be big for potential starting quarterback redshirt Sophomore Chase Forrest to get a win in a tough scenario of opening the season and his career in a foreign country.
Speaking of a tough scenario, Hawaii has to travel to Australia, Michigan, and Arizona within 22 days of each other. They also have a home game in Hawaii the week before going to Arizona. I guess the student-athletes will have plenty of time to study during those long plane rides. This is a 3-10 with a tough draw to start their year off anything better than 1-3.
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