The Big Ten finally released its retooled schedule for next year. Here's the whole conference (click to big):

via Big Ten

And here's ours vs the old one:

Date	NEW	WAS
September 2	East Carolina	East Carolina
September 9	UNLV	UNLV
September 16	Bowling Green	Bowling Green
September 23	Rutgers	at Minnesota
September 30	at Nebraska	Bye
October 7	at Minnesota	(at) Michigan State
October 14	Indiana	at Nebraska
October 21	at Michigan State	Purdue
October 28	Bye	at Maryland
November 4	Purdue	at Penn State
November 11	at Penn State	Rutgers
November 18	at Maryland	(vs) Indiana
November 25	Ohio State	Ohio State

Note that on the old-old schedule MSU was at home and IU on the road, as this was announced before they fixed the home-road deal in 2020. For months before Michigan took the old schedule down I was getting board posts from people who thought they were going back to MSU being at home the same years as OSU.

Discuss. Not much to. Michigan's game at Penn State got pushed back a week while Ohio State gets home games against MSU and Minnesota in the weeks before The Game. MSU got their bye week moved up to two weeks before Michigan, with Rutgers in the way. Michigan's bye got moved to late October, the week after MSU. Getting Rutgers at the top of the year and the late-November version of Maryland is nice.

The opening week Big Ten games are Nebraska at Minnesota (Thursday night), IU-OSU, and Rutgers-Northwestern.

[After the JUMP: weak? why?]

Strong schedule? Weak schedule? Schedule?

Michigan's crossover games remain at Nebraska, at Minnesota, and vs Purdue. OSU's, for the record, are at Purdue, at Wisconsin, and vs Minnesota. Purdue and Minnesota are welcome to lodge their complaints with any Big Ten East team. With that Purdue game, a trip to Penn State, and Ohio State in November they get another good ramp-up, but once again might not be able to make the playoffs with one loss, pending a few teams along the way getting themselves ranked.

The one thing this schedule still lacks is a marquee non-conference opponent. A list of Power 5 matchups around the league:

• Ohio State at Notre Dame (9/23)
• Illinois at Kansas (9/9)
• El-Assico: Iowa at Iowa State (9/9)
• Minnesota at North Carolina (9/16)
• Nebraska at Colorado (9/9)
• Northwestern at Duke (9/16)
• Purdue at Virginia Tech (9/9)
• Purdue vs Syracuse (9/16 and holy hell Purdue)
• Wisconsin at Washington State (9/9)<---error in the graphic.
• Indiana vs Louisville at Lucas Oil Stadium (9/16)
• Maryland vs Virginia (9/16)
• Michigan State vs Washington (9/16)
• Penn State vs West Virginia (9/2)
• Rutgers vs Virginia Tech (9/16)

Michigan is the only Big Ten that doesn't play a Power 5 opponent outside the conference. The game at UCLA was scheduled for 9/2 but that was canceled and replaced with ECU.

Big Noon November?

A lot could change but at first glance all of Michigan's November games are likely to get the most ratings (Maryland performs well). It's possible that Illinois vs Minnesota is for the Big Ten West lead when Michigan plays Purdue, but with Michigan's home slate up to that point you'd imagine Fox would be itching to get to Ann Arbor. The one at Penn State is up against OSU at MSU. The Game is a gimme.

Is this because we're adding UCLA and USC?

No, this is a continuation of the fussing they did last year. They're still trying to figure out how to put the 2024+ seasons together.

Why are we doing this then?

The simple version is State screwed themselves when they screwed Michigan in 2014, and the Big Ten used the 2020 season to un-screw the situation but needed to reconfigure dates to deal with the fallout.

The mess was created in 2014, when Maryland and Rutgers joined. Michigan State used the opportunity to request the UM-MSU home-road years be flipped, giving State two home games in a row in 2013 and 2014. This accomplished a secondary goal of unbalancing Michigan's even/odd year home schedules, as MSU joined Ohio State (and at the time Notre Dame) on Michigan's odd year home slate. Indiana's series with both Michigan schools was swapped to make this happen. Via John U. Bacon in his book Endzone, the unpopularity of Dave Brandon among his fellow ADs was a contributing factor to the rest of the Big Ten going along with the plan. Only Indiana, who would now be getting Michigan and Ohio State at home on the same years, stood with Michigan against the plan.

This created the same problem for Michigan State, however. The Spartans were keen on moving it back but not if it meant Michigan got to host the extra home game. That changed with COVID, since State would be set to blow its hosting year on an empty stadium in 2020. MSU was down since it rescued a home game for them. Michigan was down because it cleaned up the scheduling imbalance.

This however had some cascading issues—like Michigan getting just one home game from 9/16 to 11/11—in future schedules, so the conference had to start moving things around, and that led to other schools requesting changes. The retooled 2021 and 2022 schedules were both announced late (if you have a 2021 edition of Hail to the Victors you may notice the opponents are out of order), and the Big Ten intended to settle long-term matters starting in 2023.

However with USC and UCLA joining the conference in 2024, the 2023 season is now just a one-off, and new considerations came into play, mostly due to the curtailing of the Big Ten's locked rivals series. You will note Michigan was locked in with Wisconsin every year from 2016 to 2021. Starting with the 2022 rotation Ohio State was supposed to take their turn playing Wisconsin every season while Illinois rotated off their radars (great timing). The guess is they're going to blow the whole thing up again in 2024.