How will Penn State fulfill new Big Ten scheduling commitment?

Big Ten’s new scheduling commitment is good for fans, even better for TV. How will Penn State fulfill its new scheduling obligations?

Anyone who has followed Penn State football for as long as I have been paying attention has likely discussed Penn State’s relatively weak approach to non-conference scheduling at one point or another. In 2006 Penn State added Youngstown State to the non-conference schedule, the first time in decades the Nittany Lions took on an opponent from the FCS ranks for a regular season game. Two years later the season opened with Coastal Carolina, a program that was not yet on the same level it currently stands in the next level down. Eastern Illinois popped up in the middle of the 2009 season, followed again by Youngstown State in 2010 and Indiana State in 2011. While the FCS opponents were rare, the trend to fill Beaver Stadium for an easy win was clear as day. Schedule an easy opponent, pick up an easy win, make money on a home game without the real threat of embarrassment.

Penn State was hardly the only school in the Big Ten to arrange such schedules. Most teams in the conference have done it at one point or another. But that is all about to change as the Big Ten has formally unveiled a new conference-wide scheduling commitment that will begin taking effect in 2016. The new scheduling initiative is designed to boost the conference’s overall strength of schedule, and it should do just that by eliminating FCS opponents across the board and adding one game per season against another power conference opponent at a time when the conference is also jumping from eight to nine conference games per season. Penn State’s schedule just got meatier, it would seem.

Here is how the new Big Ten scheduling will look for each school starting in 2016 (with the Big Ten making a few exceptions to account for previously scheduled games where needed):

• 9 Big Ten conference games per season (5 home/4 away one year, 4 home/5 away the other)
• 1 game against another power conference opponent each season
• 0 games against FCS opponents

The Big Ten joins the ACC (starting in 2017) and SEC (2016) in requiring its members to schedule one game per season against another power conference opponent. That is one game per year against a school from the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 or SEC. Notre Dame and BYU also count toward satisfying this scheduling commitment (Army and UMass — independent starting in 2016 — apparently do not). Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany also said this is all more of an agreement between athletic directors and there may be no real punishment for not following the scheduling guidelines. Again, there may come a time when scheduling to meet these guidelines is pretty much impossible. With the ACC, SEC and now Big Ten all asking for one non-conference game per year against power conference foes (and each of those conferences with 14 teams), there may not be enough to go around all the time. Not with just 10 schools in the Big 12 and 12 in the Pac-12, and those conferences do not have such a requirement to fulfill.

It should be noted the Big Ten is moving to this new scheduling commitment in a collaborative effort to enhance the conference’s standing among peer power conferences, but also allowing it to kick in just as the Big Ten is about to enter a new round of media rights negotiations. Don’t think that didn’t enter the mind of Jim Delany and the powers that be around the conference. Oh, this is really good for the fans, but it is extra meaningful to the TV executives cutting the checks.

However, it ends up working out, the potential for much more attractive non-conference schedules is sitting right in front of us. No more FCS opponents that lose the interest of fans by halftime. One extra conference game. One guaranteed game against a power conference (even if it is Kansas or Wake Forest). That leaves room for just two non-conference games you may or may not have much interest.

How Penn State addresses this in the future should be very intriguing. As things stand now, Penn State will meet its power conference opponent requests from 2016 through 2020 between a four-game series with Pittsburgh (2016-2019) and the first in a split home-and-home with Virginia Tech (2020, 2025). West Virginia in 2023-2024 also satisfies the non-conference scheduling requirement. The 2021 and 2022 seasons are still vacant (if you are curious, Pittsburgh is already lined up to play Tennessee in those seasons).

As I have touched on before, the ACC’s power conference requirement could help open the door to a potential long-term agreement between Penn State and Pitt but it would have to come well down the line due to current scheduling conflicts. Penn State also had no obligation to agree to such a series with no power conference requirement. Now that Penn State has the same commitment to power conference opponents, perhaps that long-term revival of the series is more realistic.

Or maybe Penn State uses this new commitment to continue expanding its non-conference scheduling, maybe even to explore a big money neutral site game. Of course, Penn State will not be the only school looking for ways to fulfill its scheduling commitment. Whatever happens, Penn State’s future schedules should get a bit more entertaining.

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