Nebraska is "welcomed" to the Big 10

Submitted by Dan Man on

I think it's awesome how the conference picked Nebraska's innaugural Big 10 schedule.  They face Wisconsin and OSU at home, and have us, MSU, Penn St., and Iowa on the road.  The message seems pretty clear to me: if the Cornhuskers want to get into the Big 10 championship on their first try, they're going to have to earn it.  I think that's the way it should be.

david from wyoming

September 1st, 2010 at 10:01 PM ^

I think they just created balanced divisions and this was the result. There was no carefully planned message sent to one team. Any team that is aiming for the Big10 championship will have to earn it.

Dan Man

September 1st, 2010 at 10:09 PM ^

Do you mean to say that, picking from Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois, the conference just randomly picked the three hardest teams for Nebraska?

This was without a doubt intentional.

wildbackdunesman

September 1st, 2010 at 10:16 PM ^

I fully agree with you.  The odds are overwhelmingly that it was intentional.  It might not have been to send a message though.  It might be to help leverage better TV contracts ($$$$$) when the new premier team is playing ALL of the big boys in the BigTen and racking up a lot of interest and ratings.  Nebraska playing - Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin and Iowa certainly drives home the point that this conference is now a step up from where it was.

RRRULZ

September 1st, 2010 at 10:48 PM ^

it's clearly about $$$ and ratings for the big roll out of the new and improved Big Ten/12 Football.  They have Nebraska @ Wisky week 1 - a big game.  Then OSU for their first conference home game...HUGE game.  and the final three weeks are @ Penn State, @ Michigan, and hosting Iowa!  BRUTAL run...but also all Marquee big time games w/ conference title game implications. 

So they set this up not to give Nebraska the hardest road possible, they gave them OSU and Wisky + Protected PSU because it means BIG ratings for the first two years of the new era.  after that in 2013 and 2014 they'll drop OSU and Wisky for Purdue and Illinois or Indiana and things will come down to earth a bit.  But they will most definitely face a huge challenge right away. 

And you know what?  It's awesome....The Big Ten just got serious and is going to challenge for supremacy in College Football. 

david from wyoming

September 1st, 2010 at 10:29 PM ^

The reason Nebraska joined the Big10 was because the Big12 was horribly unbalanced and they (Nebraska) felt like they had much less than 1/12 of a vote. If you think all the AD's sat down in a room with Tom Osborne and told him you're going to get the most difficult set of games in your first year, why would Osborne not justifiably flip his lid about that?

Does Nebraska have a more difficult slate of games because of the teams rotating on and off? Maybe you could make that case. Did it happen to send them a message? Ah, I don't really think so.

ChicagoB1GRed

September 1st, 2010 at 10:54 PM ^

just an old fashioned welcome to smashmouth football and a little put you in your place, sprinkled with showing off the newbie to all the best teams and fans and milking the TV ratings. 

 

No harm in that. And believe me, we Nebraska fans didn't want to start our tour checking out MSU and Indiana as the highlight. No fun in that, gotta pay your dues. 

MgoViper

September 1st, 2010 at 10:08 PM ^

Just got home and saw the alignments. Thanks Big Ten, my house will be even more intense for a season of the year. If you're wondering what i mean, my wife is a native Nebraskan. She is a HUGE Cornhuskers fan. Anyone one know where i can get one of those "Divided Housholds" flags? Michigan/Nebraska

The best part of the news, is that they are leaving THE GAME alone.

Only 2 more days and an alarm till kick off. Go Blue!!!!!!

 

aerial1

Waxing Gibbous

September 1st, 2010 at 10:40 PM ^

They probably tried to bring back on to the schedules as many of the teams that had been off the previous two years. In our case, it was automatic with the way the divisions shook out that NW and MIN are back on, but that might not have been the case with some of the other teams. Looking at it, there are now scheduled-in 4 year hiatuses for a number of teams series'. More than likely, it had a lot less to do with sticking the Huskers with a tough schedule and more to do with trying to find a way to mesh the old schedule into the new and maintaining the protected cross-divisional games.

Adrian

September 1st, 2010 at 10:52 PM ^

what I really liked about this whole thing was that even if osu has been the better team this past decade michigan is still the most important team to the big ten. It seemed that keeping michigans interests was most important. We preserved most of our rivalries we couldnt get them all but hey it seems like we didnt lose too much actually gained alot my prediction is michigan is going to face ohio state in the championship game next season. Nebraska is gonna have too tough of a schedule. the first championship is gonna be settled between the biggest rivals, what a great way to start it off.

octal9

September 2nd, 2010 at 12:17 AM ^

(Emphasis mine)

We preserved most of our rivalries we couldnt get them all

Huh?

Before:

OSU - played every year

MSU - played every year

Minn - occasionally rotated off

PSU - occasionally rotated off

Neb - OoC game, like that would ever happen

OSU - protected cross-divisional rivalry, play them every year

MSU - in division, play them every year

Minn -in division, play them every year

PSU - occasionally rotated off

Neb - in division, play them every year

What rivalry did we miss out on, exactly? Surely not Illinois, that's a one-way rivalry. And heck I only include PSU/Neb here 'cause, well, what else can I put there? If anything we gained in the "playing our rivals" aspect. I can see Michigan-Nebraska becoming a big rivalry game - those are two very proud programs.

We can call it the Corn Bowl

jmblue

September 2nd, 2010 at 2:36 AM ^

Well, we are - in theory - going to only play PSU 40% of the time now, instead of 75%.   (Actually, we've played them 88.9% of the time, counting this season, but on paper we were supposed to play 75% of the time.)   That is a significant change.  That's one thing I don't like about having a protected cross-division game.  Of the five other teams in OSU's division, we can only play two per year.   

Adrian

September 2nd, 2010 at 9:48 AM ^

I was referring to PSU but its not a big deal since I think that a rivalry with Nebraska is going to be alot better than PSU. Nebraska is the only team that we dont have a winning record to in our conference. That alone is enough of a reason for me

Tater

September 2nd, 2010 at 12:30 AM ^

Their schedule will rotate soon, and they will have a few "easy" years, relatively speaking.  I think the division is definitely the tougher of the two, though.  Michigan and Nebraska will become a very good rivalry within a few years, and will be a much-anticipated game next season.

Everyone in the conference now has to play a bunch of good teams.  There will be some years where teams get lucky, but adding Nebraska to the Big Ten has suddenly put the Big Ten back among the Big Boys.  If RR is successful, it will influence the conference to value speed a lot more, and the last of the SEC's advantages over the Big Ten will be gone.  

RR had already influenced the conference indirectly before he even got to Michigan.  Now, there are a lot more teams using the spread than there were.  The Big Ten is rapidly shedding its "anachronism" label.  This bodes well for the future of Big Ten football. 

Grobdelnick

September 2nd, 2010 at 2:09 AM ^

Calling Nebraska's schedule "brutal" means Michigan will be a tough game--and I haven't really seen evidence that will be the case.

So far, Michigan looks like a break for them.

jmblue

September 2nd, 2010 at 2:27 AM ^

They'd never admit it, but I'd bet it was intentional, just as we "coincidentally" played PSU 10 years in a row (1993-02) even though they weren't a protected rivalry (and thus should have rotated off our schedule for two of the first eight years). 

Along these lines, of the three schools we won't play the next two years (PSU, Wisc, IU), there will be one that we also won't play in 2013 and 2014, unless the league goes to nine conference games.   Something tells me the Big Ten scheduling computer will have us miss the Hoosiers.