It’s the offseason for football fans, a time when the upcoming fall’s games are discussed and dissected ad nauseum.
This summer is different, however, in that it’s actually next fall’s matchups that are drawing attention.
The 2024 season will mark a major change for USC and UCLA, who will compete in the Big Ten for the first time.
The largely Midwestern-based conference is one of the top two in college football, and the Bruins and Trojans will face more prestigious and challenging opponents than they have recently in the Pac-12.
The Big Ten on Thursday released its matchups for next year, and football fans in the Los Angeles area are in for an exciting season. Some of the sport’s top programs are coming to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.
At the Coliseum, the Trojans will host the Michigan Wolverines, the winningest program in the sport’s history, and the Wisconsin Badgers, a team that regularly travels to Southern California to play in the Rose Bowl.
USC will also host the Iowa Hawkeyes and Illinois Fighting Illini, and they will travel to play the Maryland Terrapins, Purdue Boilermakers, Northwestern Wildcats and the Nittany Lions of Penn State, where they’ll play in Beaver Stadium, a venue with a capacity of more than 106,000, making it the fourth-largest stadium in the world.
UCLA, meanwhile, will host the Ohio State Buckeyes, which is tied for the second-winningest program in the sport’s history, at the Rose Bowl, as well as the Minnesota Golden Gophers, Nebraska Cornhuskers and Northwestern.
On the road, they’ll travel to Michigan to play in “the Big House,” the third-largest stadium in the world with a capacity of almost 108,000. They’ll also face the Indiana Hoosiers, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the Iowa Hawkeyes.
The new conference brings myriad changes for college sports, but Southern California residents don’t have to worry about losing an annual highlight. USC and UCLA’s annual game has been declared a protected rivalry by the conference, and they’ll play every year.
