Big Ten Announces 2024 & 2025 Football Opponents
The division-less format will see the Bruins play all 15 Big Ten teams in their first two seasons in their new conference.
The Big Ten Conference announced the 2024 & 2025 football opponents for each school today. When UCLA and Southern Cal join the Big Ten in 2024, it will be the first season with 16 teams and the conference will move to a non-divisional format.
The 2024 season will debut what is being called the Flex Protect Plus model, which features a combination of protected opponents and rotating opponents for universities. Each school will play nine intraconference games per season, and teams will play every other conference opponent at least twice in a four-year period with one game at home and one away.
Conference schedules will include 11 protected matchups that will continue to be played annually and feature a combination of historic and geographic rivalries, as well as trophy games. These matchups were finalized in conjunction with all 16 member institutions to ensure the traditions of the Big Ten Conference remain strong as the conference evolves. Of course, the Bruins protected matchup will be against the Trojans.
The other guaranteed annual protected matchups are Illinois-Northwestern, Illinois-Purdue, Indiana-Purdue, Iowa-Minnesota, Iowa-Nebraska, Iowa-Wisconsin, Maryland-Rutgers, Michigan-Michigan State, Michigan-Ohio State, and Minnesota-Wisconsin. The other two-play opponents for each member institution will change every two years.
The Bruins’ two-play opponents in 2024 & 2025 will be Rutgers and Nebraska. UCLA will travel to Rutgers in 2024 and host the Scarlet Knights in 2025 while the Bruins will host the Cornhuskers in 2024 and visit Lincoln in 2025.
The 2024 season will also include home games against Minnesota (Should we call it the Wooden Bowl?), Northwestern and Ohio State. UCLA’s first Big Ten away slate will also include Indiana, Iowa and Michigan.
That schedule looks to be a really tough one, considering that the Bruins will face both Ohio State and Michigan in the same season.
In addition to Rutgers, the 2025 season will also include home games against Maryland, Purdue and Wisconsin while the away games will include Illinois, Michigan State, and Penn State in addition to Nebraska.
The 2025 season looks a little easier, though the road games against Michigan State and Penn State look to be tough ones. Of course, it might not actually be any easier considering that UCLA’s 2025 non-conference schedule begins with a game against the Georgia Bulldogs at the Rose Bowl.
UCLA’s release does not mention any change to the future non-conference schedule for 2029 and 2030 when the Bruins were slated to play a home-and-home series against Wisconsin. At this point, those two games remain on the UCLA’s future non-conference schedule.
Personally, I think the schedule makers must like to have some fun. That’s evidenced by the fact that UCLA will play both Rutgers and Michigan in their first Big Ten season. Both Rutgers and Michigan had previously scheduled home-and-home non-conference games with the Bruins before each school chose to cancel their respective contacts. The Scarlet Knights had been scheduled to play UCLA back in 2020 and 2021 but cancelled the games in 2018. Of course, the 2020 game would have been cancelled by COVID anyway, but the Bruins filled the holes with a home-and-home series against Hawai’i. Coincidentally, UCLA will visit Hawai’i in 2024 as a sort of rescheduled game after the 2020 game was cancelled due to COVID.
Michigan had been scheduled to play the Bruins last season and this coming season. The cancellation by the Wolverines forced UCLA to end its streak of not playing an FCS school ever as Alabama State and North Carolina Central each agreed to visit the Rose Bowl.
In addition to their Big Ten Conference opponents, UCLA will visit Hawai’i and LSU in 2024 while hosting Fresno State. The Bruins will host Georgia and New Mexico in 2025 while visiting Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for the first time to play UNLV.
2024 UCLA FOOTBALL OPPONENTS
at Hawai'I (Aug. 31)
Fresno State (Sept. 14)
at LSU (Sept. 21)
at Indiana
at Iowa
at Michigan
at Rutgers
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Ohio State
USC
2025 UCLA FOOTBALL OPPONENTS
Georgia (Aug. 30)
at UNLV (Sept. 6)
New Mexico (Sept. 13)
at Illinois
at Michigan State
at Nebraska
at Penn State
at USC
Maryland
Purdue
Rutgers
Wisconsin
Go Bruins!!!
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Flex Protect Plus sounds like the name of a health care plan name that your insurance company uses to try to keep you from realizing they are only f'ing you over for your money, so in a way it's an appropriate term for our new environs. But looking past that, it is certainly a tricky calculus (as shown by carrying 16 teams and calling your conference Ten) trying to keep relatively competitively balanced schedules without forming smaller divisions. Welcome to the new B1G Ten order.
Just comparing us and *$c, it seems like we have a more favorable two-play matchup for the first couple years while the conference looks into further expansion vs forming divisions, but who knows how things will play out over the next 3 years? The only constant will be change.
I do think all the talk of how the Bruins will do in B1G Ten weather in late fall is overblown. We've played in god awful conditions in Corvallis and Pullman (wait, isn't that redundant?) late in the Pac12 seasons before, so cold/wet/snow/misery isn't brand new. I'd argue there might even be an advantage in getting in full practices all week in sunny So Cal before traveling to the Michigans and Minnesotas and Wisconsins and other miserable places people choose to live and study. Both teams will play in the same weather on Saturdays. It may be an issue, but I don't think it'll be a huge one like some suggest. Also, welcome, B1G Tenners, to the east side of the Rose Bowl in September...
I am a fan of tradition, but I also recognize the necessity of survival, and those two issues sadly didn't align well anymore. Thus, I look forward to watching and cheering (and hopefully sometimes traveling, Hello Chicago!!) for our Bruins in our new conference, and still rooting against *$c and tOSU every week. It's even more efficient now. Go Bruins!!
"The 2025 looks a little easier, though the road games against Michigan State and Penn State look to be tough ones. Of course, it might not actually be any easier considering that UCLA’s 2025 non-conference schedule begins with a game against the Georgia Bulldogs at the Rose Bowl."
A snippet from the "codger cadre" that UCLA played home and home [and home and home and..] with Penn State. (My girlfriend, later wife, and now ex-wife was a transfer to UCLA from PSU, so we religiously attended all the games.) The skein lasted from 1963 through 1968 and, though they were not in the Big 10, PSU was somewhat formidable. During the six games, UCLA caught them on Coach Rip Engle's pre-retirement decent into mediocrity (1963-1965) and Joe Paterno's rebuilding program (1966-1968) and got four wins in the middle of that string.
1963 @PSU L 14-7
1964 @PSU W 21-14 (Buh-bye Billy Barnes!)
1965 @PSU L 24-22 (Hello Tommy Prothro!)
1966 @PSU L 49-11 (Paterno was undoubtedly in rebuild mode here!)
1967 @PSU L 17-15
1968 @PSU L 21-6 (..and it wasn't that close!)
No need to thank me for posting this trivial, useless information. It's all part of my duty to save you a few mouse clicks over to Wikipedia! But I *am* grateful to Joe for sorting this hot mess out. I fully expect at least ONE of these cluster of teams to get on an airplane to the wrong city over the next few years. The precious CPU cycles I save on the BONE-G (prostituted USAF reference) scheduling can be applied to my next year's income tax prep!