Neither Indiana nor Louisville have formally announced the cancellation of the 2024 and 2025 home-and-home contests the schools agreed to back in 2015.
But it has been widely reported that such cancellations will occur, and IU coach Tom Allen all but confirmed it on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
The push to cancel was led by Indiana, and Allen cites the recent dramatic changes in the Big Ten Conference as the reason why.
“In the last six months, the Big Ten has changed a lot. We’ve added four teams to this conference, that has changed the landscape of the Big Ten, and I believe that we have to adjust accordingly. And to me that’s just, we have to do what’s best for our football program.”
Of course Allen is referring to the addition of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington next summer prior to the 2024 football season.
It isn’t clear on the surface why the addition of the four new schools to the conference would compel IU to cancel the remainder of the Louisville series. The Big Ten’s announcement of its new 2024 league schedule after the addition of USC and UCLA was widely seen as more favorable for IU because the new model eliminated the current divisions, thereby not subjecting the Hoosiers to each of Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State every season.
But after adding Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten has gone back to the drawing board and is expected to release yet another scheduling model relatively soon.
ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg said soon after the addition of Oregon and Washington that the most recent approach to scheduling, with protected rivalry games and an equitable rotation of opponents was expected to continue.
“The Big Ten won’t be starting from scratch on new 2024-25 football schedules, I’m told,” Rittenberg wrote in August. “The base of what was announced, including preserving the most important games and maintaining frequency of matchups, will remain. Some adjustments needed to make 18 teams work.”
So unless the league expands to 10 conference games, it’s unlikely IU’s schedule will end up being more difficult than what they’ve had to contend with over the last decade.
We wrote more about the cancellation of the rest of the Louisville series and some potentially compelling reasons for IU to make that move here:
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