Big ten conference jobs1/24/2024 ![]() Today's breaking news and more in your inbox “The league is incredibly strong,” said Petitti, one of 11 members of the CFP management committee, “but with that comes the fact that that schedule has to matter when teams are qualifying for the postseason, and that’s our job.” Newsletter With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams next year, Petitti said strength of schedule should be a vital component to determining at-large bids. “So the hardest schedule and the easiest schedule on paper should all be around a consistent equator line as you look across all 18.” “Our goal was to try and create those opportunities where we eliminated the outliers,” Kenny said. The league had to factor in the desire of those partners to air as many high-profile matchups as possible while avoiding overburdening the perennial powers. The Big Ten is in the first year of seven-year deals with Fox, NBC and CBS that will pay the conference more than $7 billion. He declined to identify which schools were grouped together. Kenny said teams were split into two groups of nine, then three groups of six, and finally six groups of three. The conference used recent and historical results to try to balance degree of difficulty in scheduling. None of the 14 incumbent schools will be required to make more than one trip to the West Coast in any season. Washington played a total of five regular-season games outside the Pacific and Mountain time zones from 2013-23. Washington’s five conference road games in 2024 will include three trips into the Eastern time zone (Indiana, Rutgers and Penn State) and another to the Central time zone at Iowa, along with Oregon. “We found over time that the best way to create a cohesive conference after you go through an integration process is to play each other more, not less,” Kenny said. Kenny said various options were considered, but since there was not unanimity among the four new members about being locked into playing each other annually, the conference felt they would benefit from the wider exposure. In 2024, Oregon and USC do not play each other while Washington and UCLA play each of the other three former Pac-12 schools. Notably, the West Coast schools are not guaranteed to face each other every season. Teams will play every other conference opponent at least twice – home and away – during a five-year period, but no more than three times. The 18-team model has 12 protected annual matchups: 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 USC-UCLA. The Big Ten calls its scheduling model Flex Protect XVIII, which locks in important annual rivalry games but doesn’t require every team to have the same number of protected games. Scheduling consultant Kevin Pauga said: “For the better part of eight weeks, the computer was running in some form or fashion.” “We’re staying with a lot of the principles that were in place when we did the original announcement back with USC and UCLA being integrated.” “Had to go back to the drawing board,” Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti said. The Big Ten had released opponents for the 20 seasons - the first with USC and UCLA - in June, but those needed to be torn up after the conference expanded West again in August with Oregon and Washington also leaving the Pac-12. Tiebreaking procedures will also be announced later. The top two teams in the final standings will play in the conference championship game. The Big Ten schedule will remain at nine league games and the conference next year will scrap its divisional format, which had already been determined before the latest expansion.
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