How adding Oregon, Washington to Big Ten affects Ohio State Football

The Ohio State football team is going to have two more opponents in Big Ten play soon. The addition of Oregon and Washington takes the total number of teams in the conference up to 18, at least for now. Who knows what else might happen in the next week or so?

So now that there are two new members to the Big Ten, how does that affect the Ohio State football program? As Buckeye fans, that’s all we really care about right? It affects them in multiple different ways, but we’ll start with how it affects recruiting.

This move shouldn’t affect Ohio State’s recruiting very much. They already have a national reach and can get talent from anywhere they want. They took the number one player out of the state of Washington in J.T. Tuimoloau just a couple of years ago so that shouldn’t change much.

The scheduling is going to change immensely. Ohio State had Washington scheduled for a home-and-home in a couple of years, but they decided to drop that series. Seems like perhaps they knew something like this would eventually happen. In any case, the Buckeyes will be on the west coast more frequently.

Adding these two teams actually makes it harder for the Buckeyes to win the Big Ten. These are two pretty good college football programs. Each of them has made the College Football Playoff before and Oregon even faced the Buckeyes in the National Championship Game.

These two teams will certainly add a stiffer level of competition for the Buckeyes and the rest of the Big Ten. It will also decrease the amount of dud conference games fans will see. Instead of seeing Ohio State take on Maryland, Rutgers, and IU, they will get to take on USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington more often.

Anything that raises the level of interest from the fans is a good thing. While I don’t think conference expansion is good for college football at large, this is probably a good thing for the Ohio State football program in the long run.