Crimson Quarry: Indiana Took Offense at Nebraska’s Concerns of Cross-Division Scheduling

SB Nation partner blog Crimson Quarry reports that Indiana’s outrage at Nebraska football head coach Scott Frost is based on Frost’s concerns about interdivision football schedules. Currently, Nebraska is halfway through a four game cross-division series with Ohio State. In 2022, Ohio State rotates off the schedule to be replaced by Michigan.

That will mean that the Huskers will have played Ohio State eight times in eleven seasons.

In that same time, Nebraska will have played Indiana exactly twice.

Details aren’t uber-specific about the context of the remarks, but multiple sources around the conference confirmed to Crimson Quarry that Frost had raised complaints in discussions privately and publicly that Nebraska had been saddled with a difficult of a cross-divisional Big Ten schedule in future seasons. His specific complaint? His team needs more games against historically weaker programs, citing Indiana specifically by name.

Whether Frost actually called Indiana “historically weaker” (or if it’s just selective outrage) isn’t known. However, Frost does have a point with the scheduling. And it’s clear that Nebraska has played Indiana less than any other Big Ten program in football. It’s a point that led this season’s preseason preview of Indiana.

Perhaps the strangest anomaly of Big Ten scheduling for Nebraska is the fact that the Huskers have only faced Indiana once in Nebraska’s first eight seasons in the conference. By the time Indiana travels to Lincoln for the first time, Ohio State will have played in Lincoln three times. Heck, Nebraska has completed home-and-home series with UCLA, Miami, Oregon and now Colorado before Indiana returns their 2016 game in Bloomington. Last time Indiana played in Lincoln, it was 1977 and the head Hoosier was Lee Corso.

That difference makes it clear why Indiana would have been named by Frost. He could have also named Maryland; Nebraska’s game with the Terrapins next month will also be the second in this series. (And maybe Frost did mention Maryland as well. Who knows, because these were all behind-the-scenes conversations.)

So there you have it. Nebraska likely suggested the Big Ten schedule rotation could be more balanced, and used the Ohio State/Indiana discrepancy as the proof.

Apparently Indiana took offense that in pointing out the difference, Nebraska was back-handedly calling the Hoosiers one of the Big Ten’s weaker programs.

There’s your kerfuffle, folks.