P.J. Fleck has worked on how best to put his tongue firmly in his cheek.

The Gophers football coach first told this joke to kick off spring practices in March and refined it for when he shared it again at Big Ten Media Days in July.

“I told our fans from Day 1: We are going to go to the Rose Bowl … so, they can’t call me a liar because we are going to the Rose Bowl this year,” Fleck teased in Indianapolis last month. “(We’re) playing UCLA at UCLA — before we got to the Rose Bowl (Game). But we did that.”

The Gophers, who open the 2024 season against North Carolina on Thursday, will technically play a Big Ten regular-season road game against the Bruins — one of the four new conference members this year — on Oct. 12 at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, Calif. It will be the U’s third distinctive road game over the past four seasons, and the athletics department anticipates its best crowd yet.

“Our fans have great memories of playing games in Pasadena, so I think the opportunity to go back out there with the Rose Bowl, and the history and the tradition to play a new Big Ten member, we expect that to be our best road travel game of the season,” Mike Wierzbicki, senior associate athletics director for external affairs, told the Pioneer Press this week.

The Gophers estimated 10,000 fans were in Boulder, Colo., for the 30-0 win over Colorado in September 2021; and the U had approximately 6,000 to 8,000 supporters in Chapel Hill, N.C. for the 31-13 loss to North Carolina in September 2023.

“There’s tons of energy and excitement” about playing in the Rose Bowl Stadium, Wierzbicki said. “For road games, we have seen fans travel well, whether it’s Boulder, bowl games or some of these marquee new destinations. Sometimes I say nonconference, but it’s great to have UCLA in the conference. It’s unique getting used to that.”

The Gophers project around 10,000 to 15,000 fans will travel from Minnesota for the UCLA game — or drive from residences in Southern California, where the U has a “good” alumni base, Wierzbicki said. The estimate comes from anecdotal evidence such as internal ticket inquires, questions from fans and responses to events planned for L.A. that weekend, including those for the U foundation and a tailgate party.

The Gophers will have a standard 3,000-ticket allotment from the Big Ten for the UCLA game, but fans will, of course, also be able purchase tickets from other marketplaces. “You can tell there is a lot of interest for what I think will be north of that 10,000 number,” Wierzbicki said.

University leadership is planning to come to L.A. that weekend — from members of the Board of Regents to new president Rebecca Cunningham and representatives in her office. “It’s more of what we do for a small bowl game compared to traditional regular-season games,” Wierzbicki said.

The Gophers last played in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl in 1961, beating UCLA 21-3 in front of an announced crowd of 98,214. Over the next 62 years, Minnesota has played in 22 total bowl games, but has not made it back to the Rose Bowl, the oldest postseason game nicknamed the “Grandaddy of Them All.”

The U last played UCLA in Pasadena in 1978. In 2011, Minnesota played USC at the L.A. Coliseum. The Trojans will come to Minnesota on Oct. 5.

Season ticket sales down

The amount of Gophers football season tickets has decreased 1,810 from 2023 to 2024, according to U data requested by the Pioneer Press this week. The U said it had 25,396 non-student season tickets last season, and as of Wednesday, 23,586 for this season.

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