Conference realignment has reshaped the way fans look at the sport of college football as a whole. Lost in the whole “college football looks different on Saturdays’ for fans is the fact that college football looks a hell of a lot different for coaches, players, staffers, and those directly involved with each of the 134 FBS programs as well.
But for those who are embracing the change, like Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, Big Ten expansion is just another challenge for him to conquer.
Big Ten Expansion Provides Exciting Battles in 2024, Beyond
Speaking on Get Up ahead of 2024 Big Ten Media Days, Day touched on various topics. But the first and clearly most obvious question was about how he felt about the new-look landscape of college football.
“I think the first thing is, the teams that have been in the Big Ten, have gotten stronger year in and year out,” Day said. “Recruiting is still at an all-time high. Every time you’re getting a win in the Big Ten is a win that matters.”
“Now you add in four teams from out west that have great backgrounds, have done very, very well. We’re excited to add those four teams, and now with the 18 teams in the Big Ten, it’s going to be a battle week in and week out.”
Day is, of course, talking about the Big Ten expansion of bringing in Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington, the latter of whom made it to the College Football Playoff National Championship a season ago.
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With four new teams making up an 18-team conference, the biggest change may actually come in December, when it’s time for the Big Ten Championship.
The Big Ten has done away with divisions in 2024, paving way for the top two teams overall to square off against one another in the deciding contest for the conference.
When asked how different that makes his season outlook, Day was pretty candid in his response.
“It doesn’t change how we approach things, but it does change the dynamic of the season,” Day said. “We’re not going to change how we do things with the Playoffs, but it is going to look different. When you look at how the season is going to play out, how the postseason is going to play out. We’re going to take every game as it comes, we’re going to try and win every game we play.”
“But, we’re also going to try and figure out how this looks in December in January as we’ll be playing more games than we ever have.”
The last point Day hit on being the most interesting. If a team were to qualify for the new 12-team College Football Playoff and win the National Championship, each team will have played at least 16 games this season. Let’s break that down.
If you’re a conference champion at a Power Four conference, odds are you receive a first-round bye. However, you can essentially look at the conference championship games as a Round of 32 type matchup. These will be Game No. 13 for teams.
If you don’t win a conference championship, your team is most likely playing a first-round game in December. That is Game No. 13 for these teams.
To advance from there, teams will have to win their first-round matchup, then win in the quarterfinals, achieve victory in the semifinals, and ultimately win the National Championship. That’s four more games for the eventual champions. A team like Ohio State.
So, how do they approach that? Day spoke specifically to that point regarding the 12-team playoff.
“It’s more important than ever to be playing your best football at the end of the season,” Day said. “When you look at the end of our season, the opportunity to get into a bye, you look at the Big Ten Championship, we can’t take any of those games off.”
“I don’t know if there’s a situation when we can come into that (resting players).”
Day will lead his Buckeyes into the 2024 season with the 34th-hardest schedule in the country. However, if you break that out a bit further using CFN’s Strength of Schedule, the back half of the year accounts for more than 80% of their difficulty this year.
Look for a lot of youngsters to play early and often for Ohio State as resting their players down the stretch in the new-look Big Ten doesn’t seem to be a possibility.
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