Kansas State schedules football series with Arizona

Kansas State and Arizona have agreed to a two-game football series that will take place in 2024 and 2025, the universities announced Wednesday.

K-State will play host to the first game in Manhattan. The return matchup will be in Tucson, Ariz.

Arizona is coming off a 7-6 season in which it won the New Mexico Bowl. K-State finished 6-7 last season with a loss to Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl.

“We are excited to announce a home-and-home series with Arizona of the Pac-12 Conference,” K-State athletic director John Currie said in a release. “It is important for us to continue to schedule non-conference games with opponents that make sense for K-State, and we feel playing a nationally-recognized program like Arizona is a great opportunity for our program and the entire K-State Nation.”

The Big 12 recently passed a new rule mandating its 10 members to schedule at least one nonconference game per season against an opponent from one of the other four power conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern.

K-State will meet that standard in each of the next five seasons and then 2024 and 2025. The prominent nonconference games begin next season at Stanford, followed by home-and-home series with Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. K-State will face Stanford at home in 2021.

Currie told The Star last month K-State was close to scheduling a pair of marquee nonconference series. The other will take place in 2022 and 2023.

This story was originally published January 20, 2016 at 3:15 PM with the headline "Kansas State schedules football series with Arizona."