The cancellation of the series with Washington by Ohio State got me thinking "why?" It was the marquee non-con game that we usually schedule, and I understand wanting an additional home game in 2024, so why not just switch years where Washington comes to C-bus in '24 and make the return trip to Seattle in '25? Other than 2026, the Buckeyes currently have at most two scheduled non-con opponents each year, so the door is open for the Big Ten to move to a 10 game conference schedule with the additions of USC and UCLA.
I didn't look at every other Big Ten school's non-con schedule, but I did look at a few, and those that I did look at all had multiple years of three non-con games, so either I'm just overthinking the cancellation, or we have yet to see the other schools remove opponents from their future schedules.
Also, maybe I just haven't heard anything, but as much as I've heard, the Big Ten hasn't scrapped divisions yet, so with USC and UCLA joining, we could see 8 team divisions. A 10 game conference schedule could consist of a 7 game divisional and 3 game cross-divisional slate.
What do you guys think? I'm not saying this will or should happen, but is this something that could happen, or should the Big Ten stay at 9 conference games - 7 divisional and 2 cross-divisional games on a 4 year rotation?
