Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald isn’t pleased the Big Ten decided to expand the conference schedule to nine games, and he let everyone who would listen know about it Monday afternoon.

“I would’ve wished we stayed at eight league games,” Fitzgerald said. “We decided to go to nine. I would prefer to go to 10. I don’t like the nine at all. I’d rather go to 10 than play nine league games. I just don’t like the nine. It just doesn’t make sense to me. But, it is what it is and now we have all these disjointed schedules, and it looks like it’s going to be that way for a long time moving forward.”

He then added: “If we’re all going to play another Power 5 team, why don’t we just play more B1G games?”

At least Fitzgerald finally provided an real answer for why nine conference games doesn’t make sense to him, but the solution to his final question is pretty simple — because the big-time BIG programs receive a recruiting advantage playing another elite a Power 5 program, especially in a neutral site series.

That idea appears like it’s going to be the new fad going into the next decade, and the BIG didn’t want to be locked into 10 conference games to prevent its programs from wanting to schedule those non-conference Power 5 opponents that are so helpful towards the playoff resume.

Northwestern isn’t a playoff contender, but there’s a chance they benefitted in recruiting from playing Stanford on the west coast this year as well.

When in doubt, if you have a question the answer is recruiting or money.