Northwestern football schedule 2022: Who does Northwestern miss on the Big Ten schedule and what are 3 things to know?
Northwestern Football Schedule 2022
Aug 27 Nebraska (Dublin, Ireland)
Sept 3 OPEN DATE
Sept 10 Duke
Sept 17 Southern Illinois
Sept 24 Miami University
Oct 1 at Penn State
Oct 8 Wisconsin
Oct 15 OPEN DATE
Oct 22 at Maryland
Oct 29 at Iowa
Nov 5 Ohio State
Nov 12 at Minnesota
Nov 19 at Purdue
Nov 26 Illinois
2022 College Football Schedules: All 131 Teams
Northwestern Football Schedule What To Know: Who do the Wildcats miss from the Big Ten East Division?
Northwestern doesn’t catch a whole lot of breaks in interdivisional play. It misses Michigan and Michigan State (good) along with Indiana and Rutgers (bad).
Also bad – Ohio State. At least the Buckeyes come to Evanston, but the Wildcats have to go to Penn State and Maryland. Making matters worse is that those two are sandwiched around the date with Wisconsin.
Northwestern Football Schedule What To Know: Take a long August trip, stay home in September
Not only does Northwestern get to play in Ireland against Nebraska to start the season, but it gets a week off before diving into a light and creamy non-conference run. Duke, Northern Illinois, and Miami University are all home games before diving back into Big Ten play to start October.
And then there’s a problem …
Northwestern Football Schedule What To Know: What does it all really mean?
Yuck.
The regular season finale against Illinois is winnable, but what kind of shape will the Wildcats be in? There isn’t one sure-thing winnable game from October 1st through Thanksgiving.
Yeah, the non-conference slate isn’t any big deal, and yeah, there are plenty of home games to get up to speed, but Northwestern has five road games in seven dates including a brutal second half run of four road games in five around a home game against Ohio State.
Throw in that Nebraska game, and half the season is away from home – that’s not big-time for a Big Ten program.