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Why are Cal and Oregon State football playing? Former Pac-12 foes square off in Week 9

craig meyer, usa today network
·3 min read

For more than 100 years, Cal and Oregon State facing off against one another on a football field, as they will on Saturday, wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.

The Golden Bears and Beavers were longtime members of the Pac-12 and its various forerunners. Saturday’s matchup will be the 77th between the two schools, who played their first game against one another all the way back in 1905.

This weekend’s meeting between Cal and Oregon State at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley won’t exactly be normal, though.

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For the first time since 1960, when Oregon State was briefly an independent, the two programs will be competing against one another as members of different conferences, with the Golden Bears in the ACC and the Beavers one of two schools still remaining in the Pac-12.

With the two no longer in the same league, how did this year’s matchup come to be? Here’s what you need to know about why Cal and Oregon State are playing:

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Why are Cal and Oregon State football playing?

In 2023, the Pac-12 became a four-team conference after Oregon and Washington joined USC and UCLA in leaving for the Big Ten while Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State bolted for the Big 12.

Half of the league’s remaining membership didn’t wait long for their own move, either, with Cal and Stanford opting for the unconventional arrangement of joining the ACC, a partnership that was made official in September 2023.

Though the Golden Bears were leaving behind a conference of which they had been a member since 1915, they weren’t entirely severing ties with it.

Last December, Cal announced it had agreed to a home-and-home series with Oregon State, with a 2024 game in Berkeley and a return trip in 2025 to Corvallis. The 2024 meeting was originally set for Sept. 24, but was pushed back to Oct. 26.

For both sides, the arrangement makes sense.

At least for this season, Oregon State is just one of two teams in a depleted conference and has a schedule made up primarily of Mountain West schools as part of a scheduling agreement between it and the Pac-12. Playing Cal gives the Beavers an opportunity to play an opponent from a Power Four conference with which it has a lengthy history and its fans have some degree of familiarity.

On Cal’s end of the equation, having the game on the books is even more of a no-brainer. The Golden Bears are now in a league in which the closest school outside of Stanford is 1,700 miles away. Their 2024 schedule features four away games that are at least 2,400 miles away from the university’s Berkeley campus, three of which are conference games.

Adding a game against what has been a strong program over the past several years makes sense, especially when said opponent is only about 650 miles away, making it a much easier trip for the team and its fans.

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What channel is Oregon State vs Cal on today?

The Beavers and Golden Bears will face off in a nationally televised matchup on ESPN2. Streaming options for the game include the ESPN app, ESPN+ and Fubo, the last of which offers a free trial to potential subscribers.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why are Cal, Oregon State playing? Former Pac-12 foes meet in Week 9