Big Ten releases conference opponents for each school for next 5 years
In their first season in the Big Ten, USC and Oregon play at the Big House, Washington plays five road games with a total roundtrip distance of 20,000 miles and UCLA visits State College.
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The Big Ten released its football schedules for the next five seasons featuring new members Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA. The schedules only list the home-and-away opponents for each team. Dates of games will be released at a later date.
The league describes the schedule as a “flex protect” model where schools continue to play nine conference games in a division-less setup with 12 rivalries protected annually. Teams will play every other conference opponent at least twice — once home and once away — and will play rotating opponents no more than three times in the five-year period.
The 12 protected matchups are Illinois-Northwestern, Illinois-Purdue, Indiana-Purdue, Iowa-Minnesota, Iowa-Nebraska, Iowa-Wisconsin, Maryland-Rutgers, Michigan-Michigan State, Michigan-Ohio State, Minnesota-Wisconsin, Oregon-Washington and UCLA-USC.
In June, the Big Ten made a similar announcement of league schedules for a 16-team conference over a three-year period. That had to be scrapped in August after the conference added two more teams in Washington and Oregon to swell to 18.
“That changed everything,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said. “We went back to the drawing board.”
Designing a schedule that takes into account rivalries, geography, historical success and home-and-away balance is no easy task. The conference got an assist from scheduling consultant Kevin Pauga, whose computer data spit out 262 total versions of the schedule before officials settled on a format.
“It’s been a whirlwind eight weeks,” said Kerry Kenny, the league’s chief operating officer and scheduling guru. “In August, we went right to work.”
To create balanced schedules, the league determined historical success with a metric that grouped teams based on winning percentage over the last several years. They split the 18 teams into two groups of nine, and then three groups of six and, finally, six groups of three. The goal: have no single team play too many programs from each grouping over the five-year stretch.
The conference explored having the four West Coast teams play one another in protected annual rivalries, but that would prevent a frequency of play against the existing 14 members, Kenny said.
“The best way to create a cohesive conference is to play each other more, not less,” he said.
As for the kickoff times for the West Coast teams, the Big Ten will avoid having Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA play home games at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET, he said.
