UNIVERSITY PARK (Nittany Nation) — It’s not your granddaddy’s Big Ten anymore and this week’s conference lineup is the people’s exhibit A.
Minnesota heads to UCLA, Ohio State is at Oregon, and Penn State heads to USC. Three games that hardly feel like Big Ten conference play.
For the Nittany Lions, it’s a 2,200-mile cross-country trek. The team left Thursday, flying out of Harrisburg rather than State College.
“Not only are we one of the most northeast schools, but based on runway length, size of plane, weight of plane, fuel on plane, we can’t get out of here unless we would stop for fuel,” said head coach James Franklin. “So with that, we’ve got to fly out of Harrisburg.”
For Penn State and USC, it’s the two’s first meeting since the 2016 Rose Bowl, and first regular-season matchup since the two played at the Meadowlands in 2000. Matchups like these are now a part of the conversation each week.
“In the pregame show on the radio, we’ll talk about games coming up that day and Oregon is playing UCLA, and that’s a conference game,” Penn State play-by-play host Steve Jones said. Minnesota is playing USC and that’s a conference game… It’s been interesting to see the dynamic change across the country.”
Jones has been around Penn State football since the early 90s when Penn State was a part of the realignment conversation. In 1993, Penn State began playing Big Ten football. That was the same year Florida State moved into the ACC, and a year after Arkansas and South Carolina joined the SEC.
Brad Nessler, who will call Saturday’s game on CBS, has had a front-row season to the change.
“When I started doing games, when I did Texas and Texas A&M, it was in the Southwest Conference. And now they’re both they’re going to play each other in the SEC,” Nessler said. “When I started the Big Ten, it was ten teams. When I started doing games in the ACC, Florida State wasn’t in the ACC and now they want to get out of the ACC.”
This year has been among the most active realignment seasons to date. Former PAC-12 Schools Stanford and Cal moved to the ACC. Big XII Powers Oklahoma and Texas moved into the SEC. Then Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA all joined the Big Ten.
“For Lincoln Riley, his job got more difficult, for James Franklin his job got more difficult because the depth of the conference became greater,” Jones said.
The realignment will have its issues. Big Ten teams who move two time zones are 1-8 this year. Cross-country travel will cause logistic headaches. But the on-field product has been hard to argue with.
Week six was one of the wildest in recent years and some of the marquee upsets involved non-tradition conference matchups. Minnesota upset USC, Washington topped Michigan and Miami’s comeback over new ACC member Cal was one for the ages.
“These match-ups are Rose Bowl worthy just about every weekend,” Nessler added. “So that’s kind of the neat part about it. When I did Michigan at USC earlier this year, I was like, wow. And then Wisconsin then and USC and I’m like, okay, well, that never would have happened either unless they were playing in Pasadena. And so this one’s the same way.”
“Saturday is the day the Big Ten has waited for,” Jones added. You have an afternoon game on CBS with Penn State and USC, and your nightcap is Oregon, Ohio State, and they’re both Big Ten games. That’s why the Big Ten’s doing this. It’s that kind of power where they can dominate 8 hours of television on a Saturday.”