Once USC and UCLA finalized their move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, one of the key questions was how the conference would handle scheduling, specifically for football.
Well, we have our answer.
The Big Ten unveiled their conference football schedules for 2024 and 2025 on Thursday, utilizing a “Flex Protect” model that allows the league to assign different numbers of permanent annual opponents for each member team. Programs can play between one and three protected annual opponents while cycling through the rest of the league’s schools over several years.
Minnesota’s protected opponents will be Iowa and Wisconsin.