Nebraska football: Big Ten’s ‘random draw’ could end up giving Huskers true rival
The Nebraska football learned about its protected rivalry for the very near future and the “random draw” couldn’t have been better.
On Wednesday, the Big Ten announced who the Nebraska football team, and the rest of the conference would be playing from 2022 to 2025. In addition, the league unveiled the teams who are going to be the “protected rivalries” during that time period.
While the league claims it was an entirely random draw, the matchups sure seem to have been guided by the hand of fate, if not a human one. Wisconsin will take on Ohio State. Minnesota will match up against Michigan State, Northwestern will square off against Maryland and Ilinois has the job of trying to knock off Penn State every year.
Iowa gets Rutgers, which seems a bit funny in its own right. Nebraska will be squaring off against Michigan. Because of the uneven draws in the Big Ten, this season will be the first time since 2013 that the two teams have squared off.
Nebraska Cornhuskers
They won’t play again until 2022. You would think it impossible to argue that makes a rivalry but there’s just something special about Michigan vs Nebraska. Even before the Huskers joined the Big Ten, their bowl game against the Wolverines was the most entertaining bowl game for the Cornhuskers in recent memory.
Now that Scott Frost is at the helm of the Huskers, and Harbaugh is in Ann Arbor, there seems to be a real tension between the two programs. You might remember they had a little bit of a kerfuffle when Frost brought his UCF Knights to Michigan back in 2016.
After the game, a game UCF lost 51-14, Frost claimed his team was the more physical squad. It was an odd comment at the time, and it clearly got under Harbaugh’s skin.
When he was asked about the comment, he talked about it for some time. Now that both coaches are in the same conference, it feels like it was meant to be. Frost’s first season at NU and he goes up against Harbaugh again?
It’s too early in the season to be billed as a real title fight. It can absolutely be billed as a kind of foreshadowing.
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If the Big Ten really did come up with this matchup by drawing teams out of a hat, then it lucked out. Now it just sucks Nebraska football fans have to wait that long after this year, to see the two coaches duke it out.