LAS VEGAS — Ohio State football’s future nonconference schedules are littered with marquee opponents.
Not only do the Buckeyes begin a home-and-home series with Texas this year, but they are due to meet other Southeastern Conference blue bloods over the next decade.
There’s Alabama in 2027 and 2028, followed by Georgia in 2030 and 2031.
Ohio State is holding off, however, on scheduling more games against schools from the other power conferences as the College Football Playoff format remains in flux after this season.
At issue is the uncertainty surrounding automatic bids.
While Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has pushed for a further expansion of the bracket to 16 teams as part of a model that would reserve four spots for the league’s teams and another four for the SEC, the plan has not gained approval ahead of a Dec. 1 deadline needed to take effect in 2026.
As debate continues, Ohio State is waiting to see how it unfolds before adding more premier programs. Its only recent scheduling activity included adding service academy Navy and Youngstown State, a member of the Football Championship Subdivision, for 2029.
“There’s no reason to schedule until you have clarity,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said. “You could say we’re in a holding pattern.”
The Buckeyes’ preference is for Petitti’s plan to be adopted, giving them more leeway to include a Power Four school as part of their nonconference schedule.
During his turn at Big Ten media days on July 22, Ohio State coach Ryan Day expressed a preference to play 10 games against power conference schools, including nine as part of the Big Ten schedule and another out of conference.
The lack of automatic berths, though, makes the prospect of a 10th game against a power conference program less appealing.
“If we’re not going to do that, I don’t think it makes sense to do that,” Day said. “You have your nine conference games and schedule other nonconference games that aren’t in the Power Four.”
The anticipated series with Alabama and Georgia figure to be safe.
“What’s scheduled is scheduled,” Day said.
In an interview last week, Bjork said, “We anticipate that sticking.”
But nonconference schedules into the 2030s could look more like last year when the Buckeyes lacked a headliner in early September, facing teams from the Mid-American and Sun Belt conferences to open the season.
It would be a shift in philosophy. Since the Big Ten moved to a nine-game conference schedule in 2016, Ohio State has only twice in nine seasons put together a three-game nonconference scheduled that lacked at least one Power Four program or Notre Dame.
“Until there’s continuity between conferences, if you’re in the Big Ten, it would make no sense to have anything other than a case to have four automatic qualifiers and an expanded pool of teams,” Day said, “because when you play nine conference games, it’s not the same as someone who plays eight conference games. If you’re going to be compared against that, it’s just not the same.”
While the Big 12 also plays nine conference games, the ACC and SEC have long had schedules that feature eight conference games.
The potential of automatic bids is a way to mitigate the discrepancy in conference schedules and afford the Buckeyes a level of protection to pursue more aggressive schedules outside the Big Ten.
Since the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2014 first implemented a playoff format to crown the national champion, beginning with a four-team field before moving to a 12-team bracket last season, the selection committee has heavily weighed wins and losses on teams’ resumes.
No team with two or more losses made the four-team playoff in 10 seasons. The counting of losses by the committee adds risk to the high-profile nonconference games.
“If it’s just about how many games you win and the goal is to be 12-0 or 11-1, those games will go away,” Bjork said.
The prospect is not especially alluring.
Day described the upcoming season opener against Texas as “great for college football.”
“How excited is everyone going to be across the country to watch this first game?” he asked.
But similar series could become endangered at Ohio State without automatic playoff bids or at least some scheduling continuity across the sport.
“You don’t want those to go away,” Bjork said. “That’s been our mantra. We don’t want those to go away. Let’s hope they don’t.”
Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com and follow along on Bluesky, Instagram and X for more.
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