Big Ten Football: Michigan State, Oregon Agree to a Non-Conference Game

Last year, the Pac-12 and Big Ten announced an extended partnership that would entail yearly games between the schools of each conference in every sport—a conference rivalry that, in 2017, will include football for all schools.

It's a logical partnership since the two conferences frequently clashed in non-conference battles from the 1940s to the 1970s, often with two such games per year. So, this idea is really more of a revival than an innovation.

2017 is a long way away, though, and while football schedules are usually finalized years in advance, there are some schools with more recent slots still open. To that end, Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis announced on Twitter Tuesday that his Spartans would face Oregon in a home-and-home in 2014 and 2015. That doesn't lock in the two schools for the official beginning of the Pac-12/Big Ten football rivalry in 2017, but one would imagine it gives Michigan State the inside track on the game.

MSU is far from the only Big Ten school with a Pac-12 series lined up before the non-conference challenge officially begins. Illinois and Washington will meet twice in 2013-2014, Nebraska begins a two-game slate with UCLA this year, Northwestern has California in 2013 and 2014 before starting a two-game series with Stanford the next year and Ohio State will also face California this year and next.

Wisconsin is the leader of the bunch, though, with a game against Arizona State this season, Oregon State the next and Washington State in 2014 and 2015.

Additionally, Minnesota has games lined up with Oregon State in 2017-18 and Colorado in 2021-22. Wisconsin has tabbed Washington for its 2017-18 series, and Northwestern will also meet Stanford in 2019 and 2020.

There's a general conundrum as to whether scheduling games like these is a positive or negative.

On one hand, the fans obviously want more high-profile games and fewer automatic blowouts against low-level competition. And there's probably some truth to the notion that tough non-conference games better prepare a team for the conference slate than four straight cupcakes.

At the same time, though, unless a team goes undefeated or is otherwise contending for the National Championship, the value of non-conference competition is basically ignored when it comes to determining postseason status. The bowls have their own committees, but unlike the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee, the bowl committees almost never talk about records against top conference competition, "big wins," "bad losses" or any such quantification of schedule strength.

When the difference between a semi-marquee bowl (example: Outback Bowl) and a snoozer (example: Insight Bowl) can be as slim as one win and it basically doesn't matter who that win comes against, does it really behoove teams to beef up their non-conference schedule strength? Serious question.