Big Ten sked: USC will open at U-M in '24; UO-UW tops rivalry weekend - ESPN

USC will visit Michigan in its first Big Ten conference game, while UCLA will make two cross-country trips and Oregon-Washington will be featured during rivalry weekend of the Big Ten's 2024 football schedule, which the league unveiled Thursday.

The league's first schedule with 18 members, each playing nine conference games, was shaped using the Flex Protect XVIII model, which includes 12 annual protected rivalries and a robust rotation to avoid the long gaps between pairings present in other conferences. The Big Ten also ensured that any team from the Eastern or Central time zone traveling to the West Coast, and any of the four West Coast additions — USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington — traveling east would have either a home game or an open week following the lengthy trips. Both the 2024 and 2025 seasons contain two open weeks per team, which made the scheduling process easier, Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny told ESPN.

«The two main components that we were asked to hit were the geographic and travel balance and then also the competitive balance,» Kenny said. «Obviously, in a schedule with teams that are this competitive and this deep there's always going to be pockets of tough stretches and something that, on paper right now, based on the way teams look, it's always going to make it seem a little bit more difficult or maybe a little easier than it may play out.

»But our job as schedulers are to put as much of the principles into the schedule that we're asked to really manage, and I think we did that, especially on the travel side."

Eight teams in the Eastern or Central time zones have open weeks after their only West Coast trips, and the other six have home games. The four West Coast teams will not play