Ohio State AD Gene Smith 'OK' With Not Protecting 'Competitive' Penn State Rivalry

Ohio State will not play Penn State in 2025, snapping what will be a 32-year streak in which the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions will have played each other.

The Big Ten conference announced Thursday that they were eliminating divisions beginning in 2024 with the addition of USC and UCLA.

An addendum to the terms, as part of its Flex Protect Plus nine-game scheduling model, is that each Big Ten team has a set number of protected rivalries with two conference opponents that they'll play a two-year home-and-home with, the latter of which change after every two years.

The Ohio State Buckeyes' only protected rivalry is "The Game" against Michigan, which had fans wondering why Penn State nor Illinois — which the Buckeyes and Fighting Illini play for the Illibuck Trophy — weren't included in the Big Ten's protected games.

Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith joined Big Ten Network's "B1G Live" to give perspective on what went into excluding the Nittany Lions from annual matchups with the Buckeyes.

"I'm OK with it. You know, Penn State had developed into a competitive rivalry for us unlike the other 11 protected games in this model where you have some history and tradition around those competitions," Smith said. "You look at the three that Iowa protected or that Illinois protected or the fact that we protected Michigan. Those are historical rivalries, deep-rooted rivalries, but the Penn State rivalry for us was a competitive rivalry. And so, in order to meet the balance of trying to make sure that every team, every school had an opportunity over a four-year period to play at every place at least twice, you had to sacrifice some things."

Ohio State has played Penn State annually since 1993. The Buckeyes have owned the series since 2012, winning 10 of the last 11 matchups against the Nittany Lions.

The Buckeyes and Fighting Illini have a much richer history, playing each other 100 years in a row from 2014-2015. Since 2015, the two have only met once — a byproduct of the East and West divisions.

The other 10 protected rivalries in the Big Ten starting in 2024 will be Illinois-Northwestern, Illinois-Purdue, Indiana-Purdue, Iowa-Minnesota, Iowa-Nebraska, Iowa-Wisconsin, Maryland-Rutgers, Michigan-Michigan State, Minnesota-Wisconsin and UCLA-USC.

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