In the latest round of conference expansion, there has been quite a bit of talk about how non conference scheduling should work. Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule is among those who is ok with having a weaker non-conference because of how good the Big Ten is these days.
Count Lincoln Riley among those who agrees that the Big Ten offers enough of a challenge. And Riley is someone who is saying that in the face of his team potentially giving up on a rivalry game that’s been going on for decades.
“‘Bama was ahead of the curve for years, I thought, on how they scheduled in the non-conference,” Riley told reporters. “They would occasionally hit the marquee non-conference game, they’d play two other not-very-good teams, they’d play one late so they got essentially a little bit of a bye week there late in the season. They didn’t schedule for their fans – they scheduled to win championships.”
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Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule has said this kind of thing before. He’s talked about how there’s a chance that some of the tougher non-conference games in the future could be in doubt.
And as far as citing Alabama, it’s possible that Rhule and Riley were channeling each other. There’s been a ton of talk about whether or not the Big Ten is a conference that needs its teams to play tough non-conference games.
During the Big Ten Media days, Rhule in fact said that he believes the conference should get four teams into the 12-team field every year.
Both Rhule and Riley seem to agree that in order to do that kind of thing, the three non-conference opponents Big Ten teams play every year can’t be juggernauts. The more often another coach says something like this, the more likely it is that Nebraska football’s schedules in the future years will be a lot less exciting.