Does anyone know why they changed some of the Home/Away locations, as opposed to just adding the 10th game?
I can speak with better knowledge about the Michigan/MSU/IU switch than I can the Wisconsin/Purdue/Nebraska one on in the west, but I’m guessing they are similar.
When the B10 moved from Leaders/Legends to East/West in 2014 (with the addition of Rutgers and Maryland), it happened after one year of a two year cycle that had been in place since Penn State entered in 93. When the B10 was 11 teams, the two teams you didn’t play were off for a 2 year cycle before coming back on again.
Michigan had a scheduling luxury of having Ohio State and Notre Dame at home in odd numbered years and Michigan State and Penn State in Even numbered years, until the B10 flipped PSU after PSU finally came off Michigan’s schedule in 2003 & 4 (they were not a “protected rivalry”). Suddenly the balance of the schedule was off for season ticket purposes. Michigan’s former AD wanted to schedule Ohio State and Michigan State at home in odd numbered years when the new B10 East would have 4 home conference games and 5 away conference games. That would leave Penn State and the designated team out of the west (Wisconsin for 6 seasons and next is Nebraska), plus the major non-conference games he was scheduling against Texas, Washington, UCLA, Va Tech, Arkansas.
Michigan fans were outraged by having to play at EL two years in a row in 2013& 2014 - coinciding with Hoke’s slide and Dantonio’s best MSU teams (no one noticed they had IU at home twice) and have lobbied to get it changed ever since. The succeeding AD has been more interested in having 7 home games per season which meant revising/cancelling many of the non-conference games and doing a bunch of one-offs against Army, Arkansas State, BYU etc to tide them over. The new AD was likely laughed out of the room by his colleagues who had remembered the predecessor lobbying for the change in the first place.
Changing the Michigan/MSU game meant you had to change two other games to keep both UM and MSU with 3 home/away intra conference games. That could be most easily done with Indiana.
In the East, Indiana plays one home/one away every year.
Maryland/Rutgers
Ohio State/Penn State
Michigan/Michigan State
In the West Purdue plays one home one away every year.
Northwestern/Illinois
Nebraska/Wisconsin
Iowa/Minnesota.
That is the basic formulation for the 6 games inside the conference. Next is your designated opponent in the West and the rest rotates to keep opponents on the schedule every once in a while.
Probably more information than you wanted, but without fans in the stands for most of these games, it made it far more palatable to the teams that were “Losing something” by playing on the road the second year in a row.