No. 2 Ohio State will make the cross-country trip to No. 3 Oregon on Saturday in a top-five showdown that is the highlight of the Week 7 college football schedule.
It is the biggest game to date for the new-look, 18-team Big Ten conference. It's also a challenge Ohio State coach Ryan Day is embracing with the challenge of cross-country travel brought on by realignment.
"You get to control your own destiny," Day said at his weekly press conference Tuesday. "Because you're playing the best teams in the league on our schedule. That part is great. A lot at stake this weekend, which is exactly how we want it."
A lot is at stake, and the challenge is different for the Buckeyes now, and they are not alone in Week 7. No. 4 Penn State travels to USC. The Week 7 schedule has two other cross-country games with Washington traveling to Iowa and Minnesota heading to UCLA.
The Big Ten's version of Manifest Destiny has pushed the conference to the West Coast, and with that the challenges on the field have been prevalent early in the season.
MORE: Picks against the spread for Week 7's Top 25 matchups
Big Ten vs. former Pac-12 teams in 2024
Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington joined the Big Ten in 2024, and a significant portion of Big Ten Media Days was spent analyzing the impact of the increased travel from West Coast to the Midwest – and vice versa. Here is a look at the home-and-road record of those schools against the new competition.
Not counted on here is Oregon's 34-13 victory against UCLA on Sept. 28 because those teams were old Pac-12 rivals.
| TEAM | HOME | ROAD |
| Washington | 2-0 | 0-1 |
| UCLA | 0-1 | 0-1 |
| Oregon | 1-0 | 0-0 |
| USC | 1-0 | 0-2 |
The home team is 8-1 in these cross-country games.
UCLA lost at Penn State 27-11 in Week 6. The Bruins also lost to Indiana 42-13 at the Rose Bowl on Sept. 14. That is the only game so far where the former Pac-12 school lost at home to the incumbent Big Ten school.
USC has a pair of Big Ten losses at Michigan and Minnesota – both coming as the result of giving up a touchdown in the final minutes of the fourth quarter. Washington split games against Rutgers and Michigan.
Oregon beat Michigan State 31-10 in Week 6 has yet to play at a traditional Big Ten school on the road.
We didn't include one other game. Purdue played at Oregon State – which remains a member of the Pac-12 – on Sept. 21. The Beavers won 38-21.
This isn't a new trend between those conferences in the regular season.
MORE: SN's top 25 after wacky Week 6 | Ranking all 134 teams
Big Ten vs. former Pac-12 record since 2000
Look at the records in the regular season from 2000-23 between the old Pac-12 and the Big Ten.
According to MCubed.net, The Big Ten had a 10-31 record on the road against the Pac-12 in regular-season games in those 24 seasons.
The Pac-12 fared better when traveling to Big Ten schools from 2000-23 with a 19-27 record. Perhaps that is a result of the geographical layout of the former Pac-12, which stretched approximately 1,360 miles from Tucson, Ariz, to Pullman, Wash. That is about the same as the 1,296 mile distance from Piscataway, N.J. to Lincoln, Neb., but Rutgers and Nebraska were not in the same division in the previous Big Ten setup.
Penn State coach James Franklin addressed one of the challenges the Nittany Lions face with travel in his press conference on Monday.
"That was a big part of our discussions with the Big Ten when this thing got started is not only are we one of the most northeast schools, but based on runway length, size of the plane, weight of the plane, fuel on the plane, we can't get out of here unless we would stop for fuel," Franklin said.
Franklin said the team will fly out of Harrisburg, Pa., on Thursday for the Saturday game against USC, which adds a 90-minute drive to the front-end and back-end of a five-hour flight.
MORE: Updated College Football Playoff projection after Week 6
Will Ohio State, Penn State break the trend?
These trends are why Michigan's 27-17 loss to Washington did not come as a surprise. The Wolverines were 0-4 when traveling to the West Coast in the regular season in that stretch, with losses at UCLA (2000), Washington (2001), Oregon (2003) and Utah (2015).
Penn State has not played a regular-season road game against a former Pac-12 school since 1990-91 – when they lost at USC in consecutive seasons. The Nittany Lions are favored in the return trip to The Coliseum, but it remains a challenge given the trend.
"We try to approach it that way and give it the right amount of respect," Franklin said. "Try to be as informed as we can, try to be as aware as we can of what the environment is going to be like, what the locker room is going to be like, what the stadium is going to be like, all of that, so we can try to replicate those things during the week so that when we go there our guys aren't surprised."
Ohio State, meanwhile, is 3-2 in true road games on the West Coast since 2001. The victories were at Arizona (2000), Washington (2007) and Cal (2013). The losses were at UCLA (2001) and USC (2009). The challenge at Autzen Stadium is new – one the Buckeyes have not encountered 1967 – which happened to be a 30–0 victory.
Will that travel be a major obstacle for the Buckeyes?
"I don't really see it as much of a challenge that way," Day said Tuesday. "I think it's a 4.5 hour flight. A couple more hours than Nebraska. We're gonna stay on our time schedule. I think we got a good plan."
