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Shopify.com.ukau.ukesl. Hey, hey, where you've been, the Buckeye talk is about to begin.

Hey, hey, hey, come on then.

Welcome back to Buckkeye Talk. I am Stephen Means. That's Stefan Christnick, and that is Andrew Gillis. The schedule is officially out for the Big Ten. We've known the non-conference schedule for a while now. We've known the opponents for a while now, but for whatever reason, Big Ten waited all, waited until the end of the year. Well, not even the end of the year. Like, they waited forever in a day to release the Big Ten schedule. And actually, I think I brought this up on a pod recently. I was like, well, if they're just trying to make a thing out of it, right? The SEC, Stefan, as you had mentioned, had done this in December. What if Big Ten was like waiting for a window where it could create new content because that's what, you know, Tony Petiti seems to be all about is content, content, content. For good reason, right? You're trying to make money at the end of the day, and the Big Ten found that window. Tuesday evening, they put out the entire schedule in terms of when a lot of these games will be played. We already knew who Ohio State would be playing. And so here is the schedule, full schedule for Ohio State in 2026. Non-conference schedule, September 5th. They'll host Ball State. September 12th, they'll head to Texas. September 19th. They'll host the mighty golden flashes of Kent State University. It's going to be a tough one. That might be the toughest game on schedule, I don't know that. That might be the toughest game on schedule. Listen, I'm not biased or anything. I'm just, I've just heard. I've heard things about the Ken State's block. The Big Ten schedule will then kick off on September 26th with Illinois coming to sound. This would be the first time since Ryan Day became the head coach, I believe. Illinois has come to Columbus. They'll head to Iowa for the first time since Ohio State hired Orion Day as the head coach.

Maryland on October 10th, October 17th, they'll head to Indiana and what will we admit

the rematch of the Big Ten championship game.

And most likely, not most likely, could be a top 15 matchup, most likely.

Maybe it's a top five matchup of both of these teams are still undefeated by that point. And then they'll have their only buy and then they'll close out with going on the road to USC

as a Big Ten opponent for the first time hosting Oregon for the first time as a Big Ten opponent.

And the second time since Ryan Day became the head coach, Oregon came in 2021. And they'll play

Northwestern on November 14th. Final road game will be on November 21st against Nebraska and then of course

the game which everybody already knew that's probably that's it's November 28th.

It's always the last Saturday of November.

I was that Saturday after Thanksgiving so that's not necessarily when we were

worried about.

Stefan before we kind of break down like each and every game in general in terms of where it fell on the schedule, if you are an Ohio State fan player coach, you knew these were your opponents, you knew there were going to be maybe some tougher opponents, at least on paper, then what ended up happening in 2025, I know you had the number one and number two preseason teams,

but those did necessarily work out the way you thought. What do you think of how the schedule shook out in terms of when you have to play these teams? Is this an ideal schedule given

what it was going to be in terms of opponents? Yeah, I think so. I mentioned this to our

texters on Tuesday night when we sent them the schedule unveiling.

And I said the number 6143503.315, if you want to get that initial reaction for me, was I do think the schedule is going to be tougher in terms of opponents.

And I know we say that, like you said, Stephen, with a grain of salt because we thought last year's schedule was going to be really tough.

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