Future College Football Home-and-Home Series We Wish Started in 2016
A quick look at the first month of the 2016 college football schedule will show you that teams are making a concerted effort to line up quality opponents for nonconference play.
While many of the biggest non-league games this fall will be one-off neutral-site affairs, there are quite a few matchups that are either the start or finish of a home-and-home series.
Texas will host Notre Dame after losing in South Bend last season, while Ohio State visits Oklahoma for the first of a series that continues next year in Columbus. Clemson and Auburn start up another series after previously meeting from 2010-12 (the last being played in Atlanta), and there are also the annual nonconference-rivalry games that pop up throughout the season.
More and more home-and-home series are being scheduled between power programs thanks to several leagues requiring such games, as well as the increased importance being placed on a team's strength of schedule. Not a week goes by when a future series isn't announced, including recent ones such as Vanderbilt/Wake Forest (2022-23), Maryland/Virginia Tech (2026-29) and series pitting Arizona against Kansas State (2024-25) and Nebraska (2028, 2031).
Those are great, but they'd be even better if they were happening this season instead of far off in the future. The same goes for some other big-name home-and-home series that are on the books, ones we'll no doubt enjoy when they happen but would enjoy even more if they were going on this fall.
Georgia vs. Notre Dame
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Scheduled games: 2017 at Notre Dame, 2019 at Georgia
Notre Dame's scheduling deal with the ACC takes it into the Southeast at least once each year, going to Florida State in 2014 and Clemson last season. But the Fighting Irish haven't played an SEC school in the regular season since beating Tennessee in 2005.
Georgia and Notre Dame have only played once before, in the 1981 Sugar Bowl won by the Bulldogs.
Moving this series up a year wouldn't do Notre Dame any favors, since its 2016 slate already includes games against Texas, Michigan State, Stanford, Miami (Florida) and USC. For Georgia, it would give new coach Kirby Smart a second quality non-league opponent in his first season.
The Bulldogs open against North Carolina in Atlanta, while their other nonconference games are against Georgia Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette and FCS Nicholls State.
Smart, who was previously Alabama's defensive coordinator, held Notre Dame to 302 yards of total offense in the 2013 BCS title game.
Texas vs. USC
2 of 8Scheduled games: 2017 at USC, 2018 at Texas
The 2006 Rose Bowl between Texas and USC is considered by many to be the greatest college football game ever played, a back-and-forth affair with a national championship on the line. Texas ultimately came out in front, with Vince Young scoring the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds.
They haven't met since, and that just doesn't seem right.
A lot has happened to each program since then, with USC going on its sixth (!) coach including interims, while Texas' fanbase is "patiently" waiting for Charlie Strong to produce results that match what he's doing on the recruiting trail.
By 2017, both Strong and USC's Clay Helton should have their teams firing on all cylinders, but playing a year earlier could serve as a better litmus test. Texas faces a Pac-12 school this year, visiting California, while USC opens its season in the Lone Star State but against Alabama at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Arkansas vs. Michigan
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Scheduled games: 2018 at Michigan, 2019 at Arkansas
Jim Harbaugh did the equivalent of firing a shot across the SEC's bow by holding a week of Michigan's spring practice at IMG Academy in Florida, the latest in his war on pretty much every college coach in the country. He's had a particular knack for rubbing southern coaches the wrong way, however, and it didn't help that his Wolverines throttled SEC East champ Florida in the Citrus Bowl.
Arkansas' Bret Bielema was among a handful of coaches who joked that they were going to check out an open Michigan practice, which would have been all kinds of fun. Instead, we have to wait another two years before these teams face off for the first time since the 1999 Citrus Bowl.
Michigan could desperately use an opponent like Arkansas on its non-league schedule, which features home games against UCF, Colorado and Hawaii (who went a combined 7-31 last season). Arkansas visits Texas Tech but otherwise has unimposing foes.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Boise State vs. Florida State
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Scheduled games: 2019 at Florida State, 2020 at Boise State
Boise State's drive to be considered one of the big boys in college football has mostly meant having to play power-conference teams on the road or at neutral sites. Generally, only Pac-12 schools have been willing to play on the blue turf, though Virginia will break that trend in 2017.
And three years later, the Broncos will welcome their biggest non-league opponent ever in Florida State, a team that rarely ventures out of the Southeast unless it's for a bowl game. The Seminoles' closest journey to the Pacific Northwest came in 2006, when they beat UCLA in the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco.
The Boise State series is the only one FSU has on the books beside its annual clash with Florida and the Notre Dame games it will play as part of Notre Dame's ACC scheduling arrangement. FSU is opening this year with Ole Miss, but that game is set for Labor Day in Orlando.
Ohio State vs. Oregon
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Scheduled games: 2020 at Oregon, 2021 at Ohio State
The inaugural College Football Playoff Championship Game pitted Ohio State against Oregon in Texas, a game that marked the end of Heisman winner Marcus Mariota's career while moving OSU coach Urban Meyer further up the list of greatest coaches ever.
That game also helped bridge the gap between when the schools set up a home-and-home series and when it will actually begin.
Scheduled back in 2012, less than two years after OSU downed Oregon in the 2010 Rose Bowl, these games will be the first time since 1987 that the Ducks and Buckeyes will play in each other's stadiums. Oregon's Autzen Stadium is one of the loudest venues in college football, despite holding only about half the fans who can be packed into 104,944-seat Ohio Stadium.
Oregon is playing a Big Ten school this season, starting a home-and-home at Nebraska, while Ohio State has a home-and-home starting up against Oklahoma in September.
Nebraska vs. Oklahoma
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Scheduled games: 2021 at Oklahoma, 2022 at Nebraska, 2029 at Oklahoma, 2030 at Nebraska
Nebraska's move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten after the 2010 season was one of the opening salvos of the Great Realignment that has completely reshaped the college football landscape. And like many of those changes, the Cornhuskers' move put an end to some great rivalries they'd established over the years.
The last Nebraska-Oklahoma game was a memorable one, in the 2010 Big 12 championship, with Oklahoma rallying from a 17-point deficit to win 23-20 and keep Nebraska from taking a trophy with it to the Big Ten. That was the final conference title game for the Big 12, which sits at 10 teams, though a change in rules makes it possible for the league to have one again in the future without having to expand.
That was the 86th all-time meeting between the schools and the last one Nebraska has had against a former Big 12 opponent. It has faced schools from the ACC, Pac-12 and SEC either in non-league action or bowls, but none from its old conference.
Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia
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Scheduled games: 2022 at Pittsburgh, 2023 at West Virginia, 2024 at Pittsburgh, 2025 at West Virginia
While everyone is happy that the Backyard Brawl is back on, we just wish we didn't have to wait so long for the resumption of one of college football's most bitter rivalries.
It was announced in September that Pittsburgh and West Virginia had agreed to face off four more times, which would would bring the number of meetings to 108 dating back to 1895. The last one was in 2011, right before Pitt went from the Big East to the ACC and West Virginia bolted to the Big 12.
Pitt holds a 61-40-3 edge in the series, though West Virginia has won the last three. That includes a 21-20 victory in their last meeting.
It took changes in athletic administration at both schools to get the deal done, but even that wasn't enough to find a way to restart the rivalry a little sooner.
Stanford vs. TCU
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Scheduled games: 2024 at Stanford, 2027 at TCU
Stanford and Kansas State did something last fall that was considered unthinkable in college football: They scheduled a home-and-home series that began the following season instead of far off in the future.
If only other schools went this route, finding a way to wedge games in as soon as possible—when they are certain the scheduled opponent will be really good—rather than set them up years later, when we have no idea what to expect. That's the case with Stanford's series with TCU, agreed on last March but with the first game not set to be played until nine years later.
It's unlikely that both David Shaw and Gary Patterson will still be coaching their programs, since Shaw may someday end up in the NFL and Patterson will be 64 in 2024 and might have decided that 40-plus years in the business was enough. We also have no idea whether Stanford and TCU will be as strong on the field as they have been the last few years, with the Cardinal having won three Pac-12 titles in the last four years and the Horned Frogs going 23-3 the last two seasons.
All statistical information courtesy FBSchedules.com.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
