2024 Big Ten Football Schedules Released - Reaction to Nebraska’s Schedule

The 2024 Big Ten Football schedules have been released. Now they’ve released the dates for everyone.

My first thought was - this is not the terror inducing horror show we thought it would be.

This is what the 2024 schedule looks like:

Here is the full reaction:

Transcription:

Hello, everybody, it’s Jon Johnston, Corn Nation with the reaction. They have released the full big 10 schedules for 2024 dates and everything earlier. They had released the you know, who was going to play who. Now they release the dates and how the schedules are going to be laid out on BTM live or big live, whatever the hell it’s called a little bit ago. And my first reaction to it, I’ll get the calendar. Let me get the schedule up here.

My first reaction to it is that this is not the terror filled horror show that I thought it would be. In fact, I think this schedule is very favorable to Nebraska. The first impression I got is we’re not starting the season with a conference road game.

In fact, we start out with four home games, and they’re pretty favorable home games. You tap Colorado, Northern Iowa and Illinois.

And I think that’s pretty you could just look at this and say, well, we’re going to go for now, but I think that’s getting ahead of ourselves. But the key here is is we’re home for four pretty easy games or four four decent games. We don’t know what Illinois is going to look like next year. And honestly, we don’t know what Nebraska is going to look like either. And we shouldn’t take things for granted. Right.

But. Four home games to start, and then we go to Purdue and then Rutgers and then at Indiana and the first part of that schedule, let’s be honest, it’s it’s a pretty easy start to the season for 2024.

Now. Is it going to be easy continued as we go on through the season? No, it’s not, but we’ll get to it to a minute. My other first impression is this is not going to be Ohio States and Michigan’s conference anymore. Those two teams, those two schools have ruled this conference for decades. And with the addition of Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, I’m not going to say those days are over, but they’re certainly going to be a lot more contention for the top part of the conference.

And it’s going to be fun. And, you know, I guess earlier you thought all this break up the death of the Pac-12 and, you know, Texas Oklahoma joining the SEC and it looked like college football was going to be becoming a lot more professional. I think if you looked at the full Big Ten schedule and you looked at all the games, you’re kind of like, how is this not exciting?

I know it’s a lot more NFL like maybe. And then there’s going to be a 12 team playoff.

But I this looks like a much more exciting college football future than you thought. I thought I certainly think it looks like a great college football future because sometimes on weekends now, there aren’t really that many good games. And in the future, I mean, the Big Ten is going to be playing one hell of a schedule. All the teams in it. So let’s see, I have some more notes here.

Finishing 12 and 0 will be impossible.

Finishing 10 and 2 and having that be an incredible season will become more than norm. And I know in years past, we’ve always talked about, you know, can I kind of to a lost team make the playoff? Well, I think we’re going to get used to a lot more of that, where it’s going to be 10 and two or even nine and three teams making the college football playoff because it is expanding to 12.

And there’s going to be more room. And you’d have to think that the people who are making the selections are going to consider strength of schedule because both the Big Ten and the SEC are going to get a lot more challenging next year. OK, more notes. I wrote down, will depth be more important than five stars?

And by that, I mean five star recruits. In other words, look at what’s happened in Nebraska in 2023 with all the players we’ve lost to injury. And that that has happened to a lot of other teams, too. The game’s stronger. The people, the players are stronger, faster and the hits bigger than they have ever been. That’s just physics and people are getting injured more often. So to get with more marketing games, does that increase the injury or doesn’t it? Now, the key is this.

The Big Ten is set up scheduling so that every team gets to buy weeks. And now it’s time for us to move into the latter part of the 2020 for Nebraska schedule and look at what happens after we play at Indiana is we play at Ohio State, UCLA in November and Lincoln at USC in November in Southern California, which should be beautiful and fun. And then Wisconsin and Iowa. And I think the key here is that’s supposed to be on Black Friday.

But you never know what’s going to happen with TV schedules in the future. So I wouldn’t take that as 100 percent. But, you know, there the dates are for now. Here’s the key. USC and UCLA both get a buy before they face Nebraska. So that’ll make that tougher than it, you know, than you think that just looking at the schedule.

I mean, what a November. Yes, this is front loaded or it’s front loaded with easier games for Nebraska.

And I you know, I think that’s a good thing because I think Nebraska in 2024 will still be a very, very young team and to get games against opponents where you can set up your team and figure out who’s going to play and who isn’t. Well, that’s 2023 this season. Look back at Minnesota and think about, well, if we wouldn’t have played Minnesota at the beginning of the year, where would we be in the Big 10 West now?

Because I think we’d win a game with we played Minnesota right now. November, Nebraska is playing much better football. They know who they are than they were at the beginning of the season. And granted, we lost the game with turnovers and it’s still a great possibility that we lose games with turnovers. We are a much better team than we started the season. So you look ahead at 2024, you think a young team or team that’s still probably breaking in a new quarterback is going to have time to grow.

And then they’re going to face, you know, kind of more of a juggernaut of a schedule coming in mid October and November. And if you think, you know, if you’re thinking, well, that’s going to be brutal, it’s going to be really tough. And I wish we didn’t have that schedule. Well, here’s the good news. Everybody will be playing schedules like this. They’re just going to be probably a little bit more spread out. But everybody in the Big 10 is going to be playing other tough Big 10 schedules with the addition of those four non-slacky, non-dumpster teams. So it’s going to be harder for everyone. And if you’re worried about it, just keep that in mind.

I don’t know if I have a whole lot on this now, and I really haven’t, you know, I really haven’t looked at the full Big 10 schedule. Although you’ll notice that some teams, let’s see, Michigan, Maryland, they start early, you know, with the conference games early, and then UCLA, Indiana is the next conference game again early. And it, it, wait, I got this wrong. Well, I’ll go. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to go over the rest of the schedules later. But I think the key here is it’s not a terror-filled schedule. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be challenging. And it’s going to be, I think the Big 10 conference has really set itself up as the best conference in football.

And it’s going to be a matter of whether or not we can do, you know, if we can get through this jug or not in one piece. And kind of, you know, who is still playing good football in November, who still has all their players at the end of November, so they can go into a 12-team playoff. I mean, so much is going to change next season. And I think that that is a huge amount of fun. I would love to hear your thoughts on all this. And please, you know, spread the videos around.

Subscribe. And thank you. Thank you all for watching and take care. Go Big 10. Take care. Go Big Red.