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NCAAF Julian Sayin and the Buckeyes will get another crack at Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers on Oct. 17. Michael Reaves / Getty Images The Big Ten announced its 2026 football schedule on Tuesday, featuring perhaps the league’s strongest slate of games entering its 130th season. Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan — the three most recent College Football Playoff champions — play one another. Oregon, which reached the CFP semifinals, faces Ohio State and Michigan. USC hosts Ohio State in the first Big Ten battle between historic brands. The eight different teams that tallied at least nine wins last season will play 17 games against one another. Then there are seven-win teams like Penn State and Nebraska that generate solid ratings and garner heavy interest. A sampling of the league’s high-profile matchups scattered among weeks 4-10: Sept. 26: Oregon at USC, Iowa at Michigan, Illinois at Ohio State Oct. 3: Ohio State at Iowa, Washington at USC, Michigan at Minnesota Oct. 10: USC at Penn State, Indiana at Nebraska, Iowa at Washington Oct. 17: Ohio State at Indiana, Penn State at Michigan, Nebraska at Oregon Oct. 24: Indiana at Michigan, Oregon at Illinois, USC at Wisconsin Oct. 31: Ohio State at USC, Washington at Nebraska, Wisconsin at Iowa Nov. 7: Oregon at Ohio State, Michigan State at Michigan, Penn State at Washington Nov. 14: Michigan at Oregon, USC at Indiana, Minnesota at Penn State Nov. 21: Ohio State at Nebraska, Indiana at Washington, Iowa at Illinois Nov. 28: Michigan at Ohio State, Washington at Oregon, Nebraska at Iowa (Friday) Advertisement Some of these matchups go head-to-head against the best games on the SEC’s 2026 schedule, such as Georgia at Alabama on Oct. 10, Ole Miss at Texas on Oct. 24 and Alabama at LSU on Nov. 7. But the Big Ten’s schedule should be deep enough to counter its rival conference on most weeks. There are a few prominent matchups that have cycled off the schedule, including Ohio State-Penn State, which is not among the Big Ten’s 12 protected rivalries. It’s the first season the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions won’t play since Penn State joined the league in 1993. But Penn State-Michigan returns after a two-year hiatus. Below, a look at other notable topics related to the 2026 Big Ten schedule. For the first time as an 18-member conference, the Big Ten is fitting its schedule into 13 weeks of games, instead of 14. That helped create more quality games each week but also made scheduling flexibility more difficult. The 13-week schedule will force several teams to play after cross-country trips rather than return to an idle week. With only one open date this season, travel considerations were heightened, especially involving the league’s four West Coast teams. UCLA, USC and Washington all have back-to-back road trips, but each one is broken up with an idle week. For all three, the second road trip is shorter than the one preceding the bye. Thirteen of the league’s 14 members in the Eastern and Central time zones travel to the Pacific time zone. Of those 13 teams, 10 play a home game the next week, while three have a bye. Rutgers is the only team in the Eastern or Central time zone that won’t travel to the West Coast. With a tighter schedule, the league tried to address competitive equality by other means. For instance, no school faces multiple sets of back-to-back road games. Every school was required to have at least one home game in the season’s final three weeks, and all 18 teams ended up with a home game in the final two weekends. Advertisement Other requirements included playing a home conference game by Week 6 and placing every team’s off week between Weeks 5 and 10. The season’s quietest weekend will be Oct. 24, with six Big Ten teams off. The Big Ten plans to incorporate Friday games in Weeks 2 through 12 plus Labor Day weekend. Nebraska-Iowa will extend their Black Friday tradition for the 16th consecutive season, but the second game to be played on that date has not yet been determined. The league will announce its Friday primetime schedule and the second Black Friday matchup at a later date. Additionally, Week 1 games involving Eastern Illinois at Minnesota and Massachusetts at Rutgers will move to the Thursday of Labor Day weekend. As previously announced, Wisconsin and Notre Dame will play on Sunday, Sept. 6 at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. Several other games are likely to move to either Thursday or Friday. The league sought to address competitive concerns related to rest. In only eight situations will a team that played the previous weekend play an opponent fresh off an idle week. Over the course of the season, six of the 18 teams will play an imbalanced number of games on unequal rest. Scott Dochterman is a staff writer for The Athletic covering national college football and the Big Ten. He previously covered Iowa athletics for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Land of 10.