As the 2026-27 college football season gets closer, the schedule talk is already heating up, and Northwestern has landed in the middle of it for all the wrong reasons.
If you’re using the usual rankings, you can keep them. This case is being made the old-fashioned way: by looking at the slate and asking whether any team in the country got a rougher draw. The answer here is Northwestern, and it’s not particularly close.
The nonconference portion isn’t some impossible gauntlet, but it’s hardly a gift either. South Dakota State is on the list, and Colorado is there too, along with Ball State. South Dakota State isn’t being treated like a flimsy FCS tune-up, and Colorado still counts as a Power 4 opponent, so this isn’t the place to pretend Northwestern got a soft landing.
The real problem is what waits once Big Ten play begins. Of the nine conference opponents on Northwestern’s schedule, six finished 2025 with at least eight wins.
That group includes Indiana, Oregon and Ohio State, all playoff teams. Two of those teams earned first-round byes, and one went 16-0 and won the whole thing.
And every one of those three trips is on the road.
The rest of the group doesn’t offer much relief, either. Iowa has been one of the league’s most reliable programs for years.
Minnesota, also a road game, has built a reputation around its postseason win streak. Illinois has turned heads after back-to-back bowl wins over SEC opponents.
Even the games that look easier on paper come with their own complications. Penn State is listed as a winning team with a proven head coach in Matt Campbell.
Michigan State is another matchup that comes with a proven first-year head coach thanks to the hiring of Pat Fitzgerald. Rutgers is the one home game in that tier, and yes, hosting the Scarlet Knights is at least manageable.
Then there’s the bye week, and that’s where the schedule really gets absurd.
If you were building this thing from scratch, you’d probably place the bye somewhere in the middle of the Big Ten grind. Between Colorado and Indiana?
Maybe. Between Indiana and Penn State?
Sure. Oregon and Iowa?
That would make sense. Iowa and Ohio State?
Even that would be better than what Northwestern actually got.
Instead, the Wildcats’ only bye comes between their first two games, after South Dakota State and before Colorado.
That leaves Northwestern to run through the rest of the season with no break at all: Colorado, at Indiana, Penn State, Ball State, at Michigan State, Rutgers, at Oregon, Iowa, at Ohio State, at Minnesota, Illinois.
The final five alone would be enough to make life miserable. Put the whole thing together, and it looks like a brutal stretch from top to bottom. Better luck in 2027.
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