Thursday morning brought massive news, and I hope you are prepared.
We finally gained a look at the schedule of opponents that each Big Ten team will face over the coming five seasons, starting in 2024. While we don’t know the order the games will be played in or the dates they will occur, we now know which teams the Oregon Ducks will play and whether they will be at home or on the road over the next five years.
Here’s a quick takeaway from the schedule release as a whole.
Ohio State is Finally Coming to Town
It looks like all of those preseason cryptic posts between Brutus and the Duck finally came true.
The first thing I looked at on the Oregon 2024 schedule was to see if the Ducks would play the Ohio State Buckeyes. Fortunately for Oregon fans, the Ducks will host the Buckeyes at Autzen Stadium at some point in the season.
Oregon was originally supposed to host Ohio State back in 2020, but had that game canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oregon went to Columbus in 2021 and earned its first win over Ohio State in the series history.
Going to the Big House
Finally the Ducks get to host Ohio State in 2024, they will travel to Ann Arbor to face the Michigan Wolverines. This will be one of the premier matchups of the season for both teams, and it will come at one of the iconic locations in all of college football.
Michigan is famous for having the biggest stadium in the nation, holding more than 107,000 fans, which is almost double the size of Autzen Stadium. This is going to be a game Oregon fans are going to want to save up for and try to travel to. It will be worth it.
Over the past few years, fun things have tended to happen when the Oregon Ducks face the Wisconsin Badgers. (Thanks Russell)
The last two times these teams met ended in Rose Bowl victories for the Oregon Ducks. Both wins came in dramatic fashion in Pasadena. A year from now, it appears the Ducks will be going to Wisconsin and facing the Badgers in their own stadium, which will be a thrilling environment to play in. This is among the best rivalries the Ducks will have in the new Big Ten, so it will undoubtedly be an entertaining game.
Speaking of entertaining rivalries in the Big Ten, Oregon and Michigan State know each other very well at this point. They had a thrilling game against each other as ranked opponents in Autzen in 2014 and in East Lansing at the start of the 2015 season. The home team won both affairs. The Ducks gained the last laugh by winning the Redbox Bowl in 2018 by a thrilling score of 7-6.
This will be another chance for the Spartans to come west and see if they can get the job done in Eugene, this time with a new coach at the helm.
When it was announced earlier this year that Oregon was going to the Big Ten, Penn State came to mind and wouldn’t a Duck game at Happy Valley against the Penn State Nittany Lions be awesome. We may have to wait until 2025 to see that matchup but well worth it. This is another of the most historic venues in all of college football, holding more than 106,000 fans. It is at its best on night games when they stage a white-out: Opposing teams are forced to play in front of a sea of white.
Given the loss of an annual rivalry game against Oregon State, it is at least comforting to see the Ducks will have an annual rivalry game against the Washington Huskies. This has been identified as Oregon’s protected game each season, so we can feel confident this game will always take place, whether in Eugene or Seattle. Let’s face it, we’ve hated the Huskies far more than the Beavers and I see it as the new “Civil War” or I-5 Rivalry or whatever with a cool goofy cup of Rick Neuheisel with a knife in his head … I digress. I do hope we schedule Oregon State in a preseason home and away thing to alleviate the growing pains.
You would think that to make traveling a bit easier on the teams in the west, the Big Ten would try to have Oregon play USC and UCLA most years. However, the Ducks actually play Ohio State more over the next three years than they do USC or UCLA.
The Ducks get games against USC in 2025 and 2026, but not in 2024 or 2027. Similarly, Oregon plays UCLA in 2024 and 2026, but not in 2025 or 2028.
It’s not a huge deal, however, the travel for the Ducks (and west coast teams) will be extensive. I think we knew this going in.
Welcome to a brave new world of college football.
