NCAA Football: Non-conference scheduling do’s and don’ts

DON’T: Be Surprised if One of Your Future Opponents Doesn’t Look So Good By the Time You Get Them

Going back to Oklahoma for a second, you may notice that the Michigan home-and-home series they’re announcing is for 2025 and 2026. With limited openings for non-conference games (three or four per year, tops), many of the bigger schools — the Ohio State’s, Michigan’s and USC’s of the world — are highly sought-after and as a result schools have to schedule games sometimes up to a decade and a half in advance.

The downside of that is that there’s no guarantee that the school you schedule — who may be on top of the college football world now — will even be relevant by the time you actually play them. Think about all the teams that have been down at some point in the past decade. Michigan, Tennessee, Miami, USC, Florida State, etc… A bad year or two can happen anywhere. Scheduling a decade, or even four or five years out, is always a risky proposition.

Inevitably at least one of the teams you’re counting on to round out your non-conference schedule down the line will falter and then, in turn, people will accuse you of playing a weak schedule. It’s a fact of life. And, new system or not, some things never change.