The Big Ten is keeping their discussion of the 2024 football schedule a tightly-guarded secret.
A 3-6-6 schedule seems to make sense to me. Each team gets 3 opponents they play every year, then they alternate between the other 12 teams. That way all schools see every team in the conference every other year and (except for neutral site games like the one in Ireland) will play in every conference stadium at least once every 4 years.
For some teams it is easy to come up with 3 teams they’ll want to play every year (if not more than 3), for other it gets trickier.
USC and UCLA present an interesting challenge, though perhaps not one any worse than Ohio State-Michigan or MSU-Penn State. (Make up your own scenarios for the other end of the spectrum.)
Obviously USC and UCLA will want to play each other every year, but that would still mean two other teams get USC every year and two get UCLA every year. (I’m assuming that other than USC-UCLA they wouldn’t get both as part of their 3 every-year opponents.)
And even in a 3-6-6 schedule that still means any school that gets USC or UCLA as an every-year opponent, and 4 teams would likely do that, would face BOTH schools every other year.
I wonder when the Big Ten will start leaking proposals to see who squeaks?