With the challenges associated with scheduling for an 18-team conference that includes coast-to-coast travel, the readily available aspirin tablets at many Big Ten functions seem reasonable.
In football alone, there are 26 Big Ten trips this fall either to or from the Pacific time zone, with 16 already complete. Home teams are 11-5 straight up in those games and 9-7 against the spread. But at one point, the home team had won eight of nine games, which led to consternation about Big Ten travel.
Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny acknowledged a lot has been made about how opponents traveling two or more time zones away have fared.
“Factoring in the competitive factor of the teams that were favored to win versus the teams that were underdogs, whether they were home or away, I think there’s just a lot of information,” Kenny said. “Before we make any sort of decisions as a conference, in conjunction with our schools and media partners, etc., we just need to see how the rest of this year plays out.”
There are plenty of logistical issues in cross-country travel beyond student-athlete welfare. For instance, Illinois’ equipment truck left Tuesday on a 2,155-mile drive to Eugene, Ore., for the Illini-Ducks game on Saturday. Penn State was required to bus more than an hour to Harrisburg to fly its charter aircraft to USC because the runways at State College’s small airport aren’t long enough for larger planes.
For the players traveling east, “body clock” is an issue. Both UCLA and Washington were scheduled to play two games in a three-week time frame when it feels like 9 a.m. for someone residing in the Pacific time zone. UCLA split its games at Penn State (loss) and Rutgers (win), while Washington dropped its first trip (Iowa) and travels to Indiana this week.
“If I had my way, I’d prefer to wake up and play football rather as opposed to wake up and then wait all day,” USC’s 2005 Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush said in an interview with The Athletic.
The Big Ten concentrated much of its football scheduling to lessen the travel effects on the West Coast newcomers as well as the other 14 programs. With a 14-week schedule, the league used the two scheduled byes to ensure USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington were either idle or played a home game following a trip to the Eastern or Central time zones.
All 14 Eastern and Central time zone schools have one western road trip and eight have byes upon return. The other six have home games. No team was scheduled to play road games in consecutive weeks that crossed multiple time zones.
Kenny said the Big Ten’s approach is to use the first seasons of the expanded conference to digest feedback from a range of areas such as sports medicine, academics, operations, equipment and more, from football and other sports.
“Each week of the season, let’s try and gather that feedback and try and not make any rash decisions in the middle of a conference season,” Kenny said. “Let’s use it as an opportunity to make sure that we’re improving from year one to year two, year two to year three and on down the line.”
This week, Rutgers faces the most daunting start of any Eastern or Central time zone squad. The Scarlet Knights travel to USC on Friday for an 11 p.m. ET kickoff. It was designed to follow Game 1 of the World Series. That teams from New York and Los Angeles compete in both sports consecutively is a bonus for Fox.
At the league’s spring meetings near Los Angeles, Big Ten vice president for football administration A.J. Edds told the coaches in the Eastern and Central time zones to prepare for a late West Coast kickoff one out of every three years.
“As he said it, I said, ‘Well, luck of the draw,’” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said this summer. “Then in that meeting, the schedule got released. I said, ‘There it is, 8 o’clock. I love it.’
“I’m not worried about the kids. That’s what time they’re going out. It’s me and (offensive coordinator Kirk) Ciarrocca. That’s what you’ve got to worry about.”
Friday conundrum
In the latter stages of the Big Ten’s quick courtship with Washington and Oregon in August 2023, commissioner Tony Petitti struck a deal with Fox to generate extra funding for those two programs. In return, the Big Ten provided Fox with a full package of Friday night games.
This year, it included 10 Friday/Thursday games on Fox and six more Thursday/Friday games on FS1 or Big Ten Network, of which Fox owns 61 percent. In addition, there are four others with late-night Saturday kickoffs on the West Coast. A few other games later this season could air in that time slot.
Friday football aggravated coaches beginning in 2017 when it included just two games outside of Labor Day and Thanksgiving weekends. But those contests often were given to schools wanting to play on Friday night, and the games were among the lowest-priority matchups. With what Fox has ponied up for this package, the current batch of games are mid-tier. They feature teams that interest a wide audience but are not necessarily a game that CBS or NBC would have drafted.
“The league is committed to making Friday night successful and putting great matchups on Friday,” Petitti told The Athletic. “It’s balancing all those things.”
When counting the two Black Friday matchups on CBS and NBC, 15 schools play on at least one non-Saturday, while 12 play at least two. Michigan State and Rutgers have three non-Saturday games. Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan do not play on Fridays.
Ratings and logistics play a role in keeping that trio off Friday nights. Those three easily are the Big Ten’s biggest TV draws. Last year, Michigan appeared in five of college football’s 15 highest-rated games, including the top three. Ohio State played in four of the top 11, and two Penn State games were in the top 15. On most weeks, one of the Big Ten’s three media rights partners would draft a game involving one of the three, which keeps them outside of Friday. Also, all three must play at least two games on BTN each year, including a conference game.
With all three teams boasting stadiums exceeding a capacity of 105,000, arranging a game-day setting during a university workday is almost unmanageable. Iowa has volunteered to play outside of Saturday on Labor Day weekend and on Black Friday but will not host a Friday game any other days because of the hospital system located across the street from Kinnick Stadium.
Nebraska avoided home Friday games until this year, when it was scheduled to play Illinois on Sept. 21. With a capacity exceeding 85,000 and a sellout streak dating to 1962, Memorial Stadium on game day contains more people than every Nebraska city other than Omaha and Lincoln. To handle the traffic flow that night, the university canceled in-person classes.
After the game, which Illinois won 31-24 in overtime, Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen submitted a formal request to Big Ten officials to avoid playing home games on Fridays except on Black Friday against Iowa.
“I don’t want to be specific about that,” Petitti said about Nebraska’s request. “When we’ve talked about Fridays, put aside Nebraska situation, we’re not trying to disrupt and have the burden of Fridays fall to just a handful of schools. We’re trying to make sure that we’re fair and we spread things out. For some places, it might be easier. They may want to play more, and so it’s just understanding that and learning it.”
Maryland competed in only one Friday game this fall, and that was at Northwestern. Count athletic director Damon Evans among those who raise their hand for home Friday games.
“I used to really be against Friday night football,” Evans said this spring. “I remember working at Georgia; we wouldn’t play on Friday nights. Some of the teams in our league, they won’t play Friday nights still. But when you look at it overall from a football perspective from trying to build our program, Friday night football is good for Maryland.”
Michigan, however, refuses to play on Friday night — home or away.
“There are certain tolerances that exist in our scheduling format that we have to respect, that have always been part of the Big Ten,” Petitti said. “Those are still in place. It’s not just one institution.”
Looking ahead
Last fall, the Big Ten announced opponent rotation through the 2028 season. Next fall, there are several high-profile matchups between the Big Ten newcomers and the holdovers. Among them include Michigan at USC, Oregon at Penn State, Washington at Michigan, Ohio State at Washington, Oregon at Iowa, Indiana at Oregon, USC at Nebraska and USC at Illinois.
Some of the other non-permanent rivalry games expected to attract attention include Penn State at Ohio State, Michigan at Nebraska, Penn State at Iowa, Penn State at Michigan State, Wisconsin at Michigan and Ohio State at Wisconsin. Of course, there’s always Ohio State at Michigan.
For the second consecutive year, the 2025 schedule consists of 14 weeks with two byes. The first weekend opens Aug. 30 and concludes Nov. 29.
“The placement of the byes relative to home-and-road games, Friday games, especially as conference play started up, we’re able to kind of track on what works better for schools than maybe what they originally thought and vice versa,” Kenny said.
“It’ll be a little bit of real-time feedback for the ’25 schedule — not setting a specific date to when that’ll be done — just to make sure that we are being comprehensive in how we look at that for next year.”
(Photo of Washington head coach Jedd Fisch: Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)
