Scott Frost is going back to UCF, Rich Rod is going back to West Virginia and now the Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain himself, Bill Belichick, is becoming the newest first-time college coach as well as the oldest coach in D1 by taking over for Mack Brown (formerly the oldest college coach) at North Carolina. He’s gonna need a compliance officer watching him like a hawk, this ain’t the NFL.
I wonder if he will try to rebuild the team in his unique way through the portal? Seems likely.
Mike Nolan
I’m glad we aren’t part of that discussion. I think Braun deserves a full recruiting class at least.
Next year’s schedule is interesting:
Losing Wisconsin and Io_a is kind of sad.
Losing Ohio State is the best thing ever!
But Oregon and at Penn State will be a big challenge.
We have a chance to get revenge on the Trojans in LA
No Maryland, Indiana, or Rutgers so other than Purdue and Illinois is UCLA, Nebraska, and Minnesota are easiest conference games?
The biggest shocked to me is where are play AT Tulane in August! Who thought that was a good idea? I’d demand it be in the Superdome as our players and fans will melt even if the game is a nigh one. Why couldn’t we schedule at during our bye week on 11/1 even if it meant 3 long road trips – Nebraska, Louisiana, and California.
The home Lake Michigan schedule pretty good as none of the opposing teams will be bringing tons of fans besides Western Illinois.
Northwestern seems to find it harder to bring in players through the transfer portal if they aren’t grad students, otherwise I’d say this could be an interesting year for Northwestern to utilize the transfer portal, as there will a lot of good athletes in it from schools that have to cut down to the 105 limit.
Now, I thoroughly expect that 105 limit not to last long, I think some adjustments will be made, but it might take a year or two to get consensus on what the right number is. I’ve heard 120 from a lot of coaches, but I suspect that might be a bit too high. If they’re using the NFL as a model, maybe they’ll try a practice squad of players that cannot play but can practice and scrimmage, with appropriate procedures for moving from the practice squad to the playing roster list.
Here’s the 2025 schedule, at least before the Big Ten starts fiddling with Friday games and such; do you think 2025 might be the year Northwestern FINALLY wins a game at Wrigley Field??
August 30 – at Tulane (New Orleans, LA)
September 6 – vs. Western Illinois (Evanston, IL)
September 13 – vs. Oregon (Evanston, IL)
September 27 – vs. UCLA (Evanston, IL)
October 4 – vs. ULM (Evanston, IL)
October 11 – at Penn State (University Park, PA)
October 18 – vs. Purdue (Evanston, IL)
October 25 – at Nebraska (Lincoln, NE)
November 8 – at USC (Los Angeles, CA)
November 15 – vs. Michigan (Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL)
November 22 – vs. Minnesota (Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL)
November 29 – at Illinois (Champaign, IL)
Can I just say that it took me quite a while before I finally got the answer key to who “ULM” is? Every version of the schedule just says, “ULM.” I finally found something that had the mascot which enabled me to figure out that it’s the University of Louisiana-Monroe. But it shouldn’t have been nearly that hard!
-Michael
I was likewise confused about ULM although I immediately thought of University of Louisiana Monroe but probably because I’m originally from Louisiana and my parents were professors at ULL (Ragin Cajuns).
Still, I figured that probably was NOT the opponent because I don’t believe we’ve ever played any Louisiana state university in football. Next year we’ll play two Louisiana schools including one game in Louisiana for the first time since a 1955 visit to Tulane.
The 2025 schedule has two schools from Illinois, two schools from California and two schools from Louisiana, one of each at home.
I am always interested in Mack Brown as I was right there when he was taken from Tulane to UT, he was doing well at Tulane but Jim Bob Moffitt of freeport McMoRan wanted him at his alma mater UT, the other 2 founders of FCX were also UT alumni and so he left Tulane, my ex wife was employed at Tulane so we went to all the games in the superdome, I think they now have an on campus stadium, probably will go to the CATS! game in NO
I thought he went Tulane → North Carolina → Texas → North Carolina