Because the regular season schedule was created specifically for Big Ten members and not Pac-12 members, the University of Washington will not play a football game in California for the second time in 100 years.

No road trips to Los Angeles, Berkeley or Palo Alto.

USC and UCLA are both coming to Seattle to play the Huskies in the coming months, while California and Stanford, now part of the Atlantic Coast Conference, seem to be playing everywhere but the Northwest.

The only other time the Huskies experienced a Golden State blackout in the last century was in 2020, when the COVID pandemic wiped out a UW-Cal game that would have opened the season, as well as a UW-USC matchup in the Pac-12 championship game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

This almost happened in 1992, when the Huskies hosted UCLA, Cal and Stanford in Montlake and did not play UCLA that season. They did, however, qualify for the Rose Bowl and lost 38-31 to Michigan in Pasadena.

No presence in California poses a hardship for a UW program that currently has 47 players from that state on its roster and can usually promise those recruits regular exposure in front of family and friends.

However, the Huskies could be playing a football game in Southern California before the end of the year if veteran sportswriter Brett McMurphy’s recent bowl predictions for Action Network are accurate.

McMurphy has Washington and Notre Dame facing off in the Holiday Bowl, which will be played at a date yet to be announced at San Diego State’s new Snapdragon Stadium.

The Huskies and Fighting Irish have never played each other in the college football postseason before. In fact, UW has never beaten Notre Dame, losing all eight previous meetings between 1948 and 2009, most by lopsided scores.