On Wednesday the Big Ten and Northwestern concurrently announced the 2013 and 2014 football season schedules, giving Wildcat fans their first glimpse into the distant future. In addition to the date of every Big Ten conference matchup for the next four years being revealed, Northwestern also partially solidified its non-conference schedule with the announcement.
With the Big Ten conference expanding to include University of Nebraska in the coming season, there has been significant upheaval in the composition of the football schedule for the next few years. Northwestern will play Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois every year, but the rest of the conference will be rotated in and out every two years.
WHAT IT MEANS – BIG TEN PLAY
This makes for a very favorable schedule in the next two seasons, but the 2013 and 2014 schedules do not look nearly so favorably on the Wildcats. Northwestern will avoid playing both Ohio State and Wisconsin the next two seasons, but will face them in both 2013 and 2014 while avoiding perennial lower-tier programs like Purdue and Indiana. Combined with the departure of standout seniors Dan Persa, Jeremy Ebert and Vince Browne after this coming season, the intensifying schedule serves as a vibrant signal that 2011 has the potential to be Northwestern’s most successful season since coach Fitzgerald was still wearing pads.
Of course much of the long-term projections for these schedules are relatively meaningless. If in 2006 you had pointed to the 2010 team avoiding playing the dreaded Michigan Wolverines as a positive, no one would question the rationale; yet the Wildcats could really have used a crack at that vaunted Rich Rodriguez defense this year. The pedigree and consistency of the programs at Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Nebraska, however, make it hard to imagine that the 2013 and 2014 Big Ten seasons will be anything less than a long slog to the finish line. Fortunately, knowing the temperament of Fitz and his players, they are fairly certain to relish the challenge.
WHAT IT MEANS – NON-CONFERENCE PLAY
The partial announcement of the 2013 and 2014 non-conference schedules continued the athletics department’s recent pattern of looking outside of the Midwest for opponents that are in many ways similar to Northwestern. In 2013, the Wildcats will visit the University of California at Berkeley and Vanderbilt University while hosting the University of Maine and Syracuse University. The California and Vanderbilt series will continue in 2014 at Ryan Field, where the Wildcats will also play Western Illinois University.
By scheduling California, Vanderbilt and Syracuse, as well as 2011 opponents Boston College and the United States Military Academy, Northwestern has indicated its desire to play schools that have similar commitments to both academics and athletics. The non-conference schedule for 2014 and beyond remain unfinished, but the pursuit of like-minded institutions to play has sparked rumors of another notable opponent waiting to make the trek north to Evanston: Duke University.