The 2024 college football season is just over one month away, and conference realignment, an extremely busy transfer portal and coaching carousel, and expanded playoffs gives a brand new look to the sport.
The Big Ten has a quartet of new programs joining the conference in 2024 after adding USC, UCLA, Oregon, and last year’s runner up Washington from the Pac-12.
Those new teams create fun and exciting conference matchups as the year gets underway, but they also add some fun nonconference matchups into the mix as well.
The pinnacle of the nonconference slate is a matchup between Texas and Michigan in Ann Arbor, but that is one of a handful of excellent matchups for Big Ten fans to tune into in early September.
A few key rivalries are on the schedule for Penn State and West Virginia, Washington and Washington State, and Oregon and Oregon State – and while none of those three made the cut for our top five noncon games in the conference, that just goes to show how excellent the first few weeks in September should be for college football fans.
Below is a look at the five top nonconference games in the Big Ten this upcoming season: