The Big Ten has one of the toughest conference schedules in college football, and this year’s non-conference schedule looks to raise the difficulty for every Big Ten program. Most teams use their non-conference schedule as a warm-up of sorts, sometimes to help them become bowl eligible.
This year though, several Big Ten teams have tougher than usual non-conference schedules. Penn State makes a tough trip down south to face Auburn, Ohio State opens the season against Notre Dame, and Nebraska gets to welcome the Oklahoma Sooners to Lincoln.
While they can be tough games for teams early on in the season, they can also do two things for teams. One is that they give you an idea of where a team’s season could ride as the year rolls on. The second is you pad your record for the tough college football playoff committee.
With that, here are all the Big Ten teams’ out-of-conference schedules for the 2022 season. Some schedules are noticeably tougher than others.