Ohio State will no longer play Washington in 2024 and 2025.
OSU announced Wednesday that it has canceled its scheduled home-and-home series with the Huskies in 2024 and 2025, instead opting to replace that series with a pair of home games against opponents to be determined.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said it was OSU who decided to cancel the series and that OSU will owe Washington a $500,000 cancellation penalty that it must pay to Washington by February 2025.
“I have the utmost respect for the University of Washington and for Director of Athletics Jennifer Cohen, and this was a very difficult call to make,” Smith said in a statement. “As a result of the cancellation, we will add an eighth home game for the 2024 season, affording us the opportunity to have the funding to pay the penalty and guarantee for that eighth opponent.”
Ohio State, which will play only six home games in 2023 after playing eight home games in 2022, is now planning to play eight home games again in 2024, when Ohio State was scheduled to travel to Seattle to play Washington. The Buckeyes still plan to play seven home games in 2025, when they were scheduled to host the Huskies at Ohio Stadium.
As a result, the Buckeyes will not play any non-conference road games in either season. Ohio State is set to host Southern Miss (Aug. 31) and Western Michigan (Sept. 21) in 2024 and Texas (Aug. 30) and Connecticut (Oct. 18) in 2025, and now has one slot to fill in its non-conference schedules for both years. The new non-conference home games in both seasons will be played on either the first or second weekend of September.
Ohio State’s conference schedules for those seasons remain to be determined as the Big Ten prepares to welcome USC and UCLA into the conference next year. While the Big Ten previously announced schedules for the 2024 and 2025 seasons back in 2018, those schedules will be modified to incorporate the Trojans and Bruins. The Big Ten plans to announce its 2024 football schedule in October of this year.
The Buckeyes are still scheduled to play home-and-home non-conference series against Texas (2025 and 2026), Alabama (2027 and 2028), Georgia (2030 and 2031), Oregon (2032 and 2033) and Boston College (2035 and 2036).
