With the 2011 season coming up quickly on the horizon, Washington has made a couple of tweaks to its schedule for the following season.
In a release issued on their official website, UW announced that they have added San Diego State to their 2012 slate and that the game will serve as both the regular season and home opener on Sept. 1. As a result of that addition, the game against Portland State, which had originally been scheduled to be the opener, has been moved to Sept. 15.
Perhaps more importantly, or intriguing depending on your point of view, the Huskies also announced their Sept. 29 game against LSU in Baton Rouge that same year has been moved to Sept. 8. No official reason -- or unofficial, for that matter -- was given for the date change, although “television considerations” would appear to be a safe bet at this point in time.
In order to accommodate LSU moving up on the schedule to what was previously an open date for the SEC school, UW’s game against Nevada originally scheduled for the second weekend of the ’12 season has been moved to the same date -- in 2018.
On the San Diego State side of the ledger, the game against Washington will replace one originally scheduled against Cincinnati. The Aztecs agreed to the one-and-done road game against the Huskies because of, well, television considerations. Oh, and a guaranteed $850,000 payday.
“We reached out to ESPN a few months ago about trying to schedule a national-caliber game that would likely be on national television and we were able to accomplish that with this game,” SDSU athletic director Jim Sterk said. “Coach [Rocky] Long was open to the idea of playing a game like this and it fits with our overall scheduling philosophy.”
The game against the Bearcats, incidentally, has been moved to Sept. 24, 2016.