One thing hasn't changed about college football
Evaluating Nebraska's 2026 schedule based on what's worked in the recent past.
One of the most important pieces of Nebraska football’s 2026 offseason arrived Tuesday—the Big Ten schedule. A former Husker assistant once told me, “You can schedule more wins than you can recruit.” It’s less often repeated than other coaching aphorisms like the “Jimmies and Joes” bit, but I found it illustrative given it was coming from someone whose calling card was recruiting.
Maybe that truism is less true in a world of mega-conferences and nine-game schedules. Probably is. If so, the gap between previous and current truth is likely filled by the vagaries of conference scheduling. Nothing is going to be easy playing nine games against an 18-team Big Ten, which means the difference between comparatively-easy and comparatively-not grows in importance.
The Huskers do not have a comparatively easy Big Ten schedule. We knew that before we received the sequencing of this schedule from on high, and we knew Nebraska already took measures to address this. About a year ago, NU jettisoned a home-and-home with Tennessee, replacing a home game against the Volunteers in Lincoln in 2026 with Bowling Green.1 This is still unfortunate from a fan perspective, but remains strategic. Like most things in college football right now, the people who show up and support the thing most fervently end up at the back of the line. Starting 3-0 looks imperative given what Nebraska faces in conference play, and Nebraska did what it could to increase that probability.
As a power-conference team, Nebraska is currently judged—as are all similar programs—by its proximity to the College Football Playoff. Schedule, at least in the Big Ten, plays a big role in that. Four schools have claimed the seven playoff bids for the conference over two years of the 12-team era. What did those schedules have in common? Can we create some “rules” based on a two-year sample size?
Maybe only tenuously, but we’re going to do it anyway. Here’s a way to look at Nebraska’s 2026 schedule while also considering the schedules that have put Big Ten teams in the playoff previously. Four schools—Indiana (24, 25) Ohio State (24, 25), Oregon (24,25), Penn State (24)—have produced those seven bids.
