Nebraska football will play its Big Ten opener at Memorial Stadium for the first time in seven years during the 2024 season. And now, that game is set to be played one day earlier than originally scheduled.
Nebraska announced today that the Huskers’ Week 4 game against Illinois has been moved up from the originally scheduled date (Sept. 21) and will be played on Friday, Sept. 20. The game will be nationally televised on FOX with kickoff set for 7 p.m. CT.
That means the new era of the Big Ten and its 18-team landscape for both Nebraska and Illinois will begin under the spotlight of the Friday night lights on Tom Osborne Field.
It also means that Friday night Big Ten football will be coming to Lincoln for the first time ever. Excluding the annual Black Friday game against Iowa, the Huskers have never hosted a Big Ten game on a Friday.
This will be Nebraska’s fifth time in seven years playing a Friday game, including three consecutive. All five of those Friday night games will have been against either Illinois or Rutgers. The Huskers are unbeaten on Fridays against non-Iowa conference matchups. They defeated Illinois, 20-7, last year in Champaign, and they won on the road at Rutgers, 14-13, two seasons ago. The other two were road wins at Illinois (28-6 in 2017) and at Rutgers (28-21 in 2020).
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It also means that the Huskers’ first home Big Ten opener in over a half-decade will not be of the traditional variety such as a Saturday early- or late-afternoon atmosphere. That’s what the Huskers got the last time they hosted a Big Ten opener – a Saturday afternoon contest against Rutgers that began with a 2:30 p.m. start time and ended in a 27-17 Husker win.
Nebraska, though, will welcome the one-day bump as long as the game is in the friendly confines inside Lincoln.
The Huskers began its venture into the Big Ten with a road loss at Wisconsin (48-17) in 2011 but then had three straight Big Ten openers at home and four in the first seven years. Each of those four was the Huskers’ Homecoming game that season, and Nebraska won all four: A win in 2012 over Wisconsin, wins over Illinois in 2013 and 2014, and the win over Rutgers in 2017.
Nebraska has played nine of its 13 Big Ten home openers away from Lincoln, and the Huskers are 6-7 in those games. Four of the wins were at home with the two road wins coming against Northwestern in 2016 and against Illinois in 2019.
Lately, though, it has been rough sailings for Nebraska in conference openers – both in the final result and in regard to beginning the season on the road. The Huskers have played eight of their last nine Big Ten openers on the road, including six straight when counting last year’s game against Northwestern in Ireland as a road game. They are 1-7 in those eight road games and are 1-5 over the past six.
Nebraska Big Ten Openers
Road (2-7 record)
2011 – Wisconsin – L, 48-17
2015 – Illinois – L,14-13
2016 – Northwestern – W, 24-13
2018 – Michigan – L, 56-10
2019 – Illinois – W, 42-38
2020 – Ohio State – L, 52-17
2021 – Illinois – L, 30-22
2022 – Northwestern in Dublin – L, 31-28
2023 – Minnesota – L, 13-10
Home (4-0 record)
2012 – Wisconsin – W, 30-27
2013 – Illinois – W, 39-19
2014 – Illinois – W, 45-14
2017 – Rutgers – W, 27-17
Former athletic director Trev Alberts played a significant role in landing Nebraska a home game to begin the Big Ten slate.
In late September 2023, Alberts said that he was making a push to get the Huskers a conference opener at home.
“That’s been brought up to the Big Ten – that perhaps we can rethink that,” Alberts said of the Huskers having opened the conference season with road games in six consecutive years. “There’s a lot of nuance to scheduling. Scheduling can be hard. We thought we were close to having (a Big Ten opener at home) and then Oregon and Washington joined the conference. So we’ve got more work to do. We’re going to be meeting in person soon and try to get at least that 2024 rotational schedule figured out.”
The former Husker AD made sure to point out that he doesn’t believe there is anything “nefarious” as to why Nebraska has been handed that type of slate. But he did take initiative to address that issue with Big Ten administrators and schedule-makers and get the Huskers a home game to open league play. Evidently, it worked.
Nebraska will play four Big Ten home games at Memorial Stadium in 2024 and five conference games on the road – in addition to three non-conference home games to begin the season against UTEP (Aug. 31), Colorado (Sept. 7) and Northern Iowa (Sept. 14).
Following the Sept. 20 game against Illinois, the Huskers will travel to Purdue on Sept. 28, before returning to Lincoln to host Rutgers on Oct. 5.
The Huskers will then be on their first of two bye weeks before they return to action with consecutive road games at Indiana (Oct. 19) and Ohio State (Oct. 26).
Nebraska will square off with two of the league’s newcomers in November: UCLA at home on Nov. 2 before traveling to USC on Nov. 16 following the Huskers’ second bye week.
The Huskers close the regular season with matchups against Wisconsin in Lincoln (Nov. 23) and the road at Iowa (Friday, Nov. 29). The 2024 season will mark the fourth straight year Nebraska has closed the regular season with games against the Badgers and Hawkeyes.
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This will be the second consecutive Friday night meeting between the Huskers and Illini. Nebraska traveled to Champaign last season and flew back to Lincoln with a 20-7 victory under its belt.
That win featured a goal-line stand by the Huskers on Illinois’ first drive of the game – a methodical, surgical 14-play, 74-yard march down the field that ate up more than 6 minutes of game clock. The Huskers, though, stood tall behind the effort from their defensive line in the trenches and stopped Illinois on third and fourth down inside the 1-yard line as the Illini came within inches of the end-zone plane.
That two-play sequence gave Nebraska the ball for the first time, and the Huskers proceeded to go on a tone-setting drive of their own – 86 yards on 11 plays over 6:47 to the Illini 13-yard line resulting in a 31-yard field goal by Tristan Alvano.
There are many in Nebraska’s program – coaches, players, those in administrative roles and more – who have pointed to that momentum-swinging defensive stand as the point in which the team’s belief and culture either changed or truly set in.
One of those key leaders in the program, Nebraska football chief of staff Dr. Susan Elza, spoke the most eloquently about the impact of that stand and that the short- and long-term impact of the entire game.
“The turning point (of the season) for me … we lost that game to Michigan, and we went out on that field out there, we practice on a Sunday, and it was unheard of,” Elza said. “And we came back that next week, we played Illinois, and the first goal-line stand that we had, we kept them from scoring. That team changed from that point forward. Even though we didn’t win the rest of those games. It was a player-led team (from that point on). It gives me goosebumps because that’s what you’re working towards as a program.
“Any person in that role should want those players to be leading that team. And I knew we were going to be just fine. We all held out hope, and every game you’re like, it’s building up to this big moment. And we had the heartbreaking Iowa game, but you never saw that locker room dip after that Michigan game.”
Nebraska will perhaps be hoping that the 2024 version of its Friday night showdown with the orange and blue will feature more of the same.
Other game announcements coming soon
This is the second Nebraska home game selected for prime-time national coverage in the season’s first four weeks. Earlier this month, NBC announced it would televise Nebraska’s game against Colorado on Saturday, Sept. 7 with kickoff at 6:30 p.m. CT.
Aside from its traditional Black Friday games at Memorial Stadium, this will be Nebraska’s first weekday home game since Sept. 20, 2001, when Nebraska hosted Rice. The game was postponed for five days following the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Big Ten and its television partners are expected to announce additional game times and broadcast information before the end of May.
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