Matt Rhule on Big Ten teams playing hard non-conference slate: 'Why would you ever play one of those games?'

The long college football offseason leads to plenty of discussion and who better to lead those talks than former Big Ten titan Urban Meyer and the crew of The Triple Option podcast, which also includes former Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram.

Meyer broke in on one key topic in a recent episode of the show, asking Nebraska coach Matt Rhule about Ohio State facing Texas and the future of similar high-profile non-conference games.

He got an immediate and loud response.

“Why would you ever play one of those games?” Rhule said. “If we’re being completely honest, coach Meyer, I’m at a point in life where in my fourth job and after getting fired in the NFL, I kind of say what I feel nowadays, I could care less.

“Why in the world would a Big Ten team who’s already playing nine conference games, why would you ever play one of those games?”

Ohio State is doing it this year, but you’d be hard pressed to convince many folks that it’s A) necessary, and B) helpful.

Moreover, the lack of standardized scheduling can mean you’re literally scheduling yourself into a hole if you’re not careful. Rhule outlined how, using the Big Ten’s schedule as the baseline.

“You look at a lot of teams, and this is not anti-SEC, but there’s some SEC teams last year that only played three away games in another team’s stadium. Three,” Rhule said. “We’re in a league where some years you have five Big Ten home games, some years you have five road. You have to go on the road five times in the Big Ten with no like Florida–Georgia in a neutral site.”

Until the College Football Playoff committee chooses to place more emphasis on schedule strength, rewarding the teams who play the toughest slates, there’s likely to be a scheduling pushback.

“They proved to us this year when they did the seeding and all this stuff that early season wins didn’t mean a thing,” Rhule said. “That really was, at the end of the day, what you looked like in the last month of the season. That’s what it all proved to us. And when I say what it looks like, it’s really how good your offense is. If you’re scoring points and blowing people out late in the year, you’re going to make the playoffs.”

Rhule provided a real-world Big Ten example to make his case, too.

“We beat Colorado. That was the same weekend, coach, that Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois,” Rhule said. “That was a huge win for us, that was a huge loss for them. They made the playoffs, obviously we did not. So I don’t know why. I don’t know what the incentive is, unless the SEC and Big Ten get together at some point and say, ‘We’re doing this, we’re doing that.'”

Realistically, the Big Ten schedules are going to be difficult enough to get by in all but a slim minority of cases.

“When I joined the Big Ten, the thought of playing Oregon would have been like, ‘Wow, that would have been a great non-conference game,'” Rhule said. “Now they’re in the league. USC‘s coming here next year. Going to UCLA. We’ve already added in those big games. So I don’t see much cause for it.”