The 2024 Frontier Conference Football Schedule

When a group of 9 invites a +1

Although a couple of schools in the Frontier Conference had already revealed their 2024 football schedules, the conference itself released them in full yesterday, with a decorative chart!

The 2024 calendar has created a longer college football window this year with the first available Saturday occuring on August 24th and the final Saturday for the NAIA and Sub-D1 Football falling on November 16th. That gives teams 13 weeks to play 10 games, and as such, some schools have chosen to schedule an 11th game.

One common theme, and the aforementioned +1 to the 9-member Frontier Football roster, is the new football program of the Simpson University Red Hawks out of Redding, CA playing their inaugural varsity season as an independent.

I had previously expressed my interest in seeing them join the Frontier for football as it would help scheduling, and although that didn't happen officially, they will be playing 6 Frontier members (Home vs Southern Oregon and on the road at Arizona Christian, Carroll College, College of Idaho, Eastern Oregon, and Montana Tech) in addition to Pacific Lutheran of the Northwest Conference. The other 2-3 games of their schedule have not been revealed at this time to my knowledge.

Going through the teams in order, Arizona Christian has a surprising schedule as they won't see the field until September 14th and then play their 10-game schedule without a break. In addition to ending their season hosting the Red Hawks, they open their season on the road at Fort Lewis College, a member of the D2 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. This will be the 3rd consecutive season in which the two schools have met in out-of-conference action.

Carroll College has a schedule that could be described as ideal with two groups of 5 games separated by a bye week as well as 6 home games. In fact, they won't even make their second road trip until Game 7 on October 26th at College of Idaho. Their schedule is quite similar to last season and the final weeks will be the real test if they plan on returning to the playoffs.

The Yotes begin their quest towards the NAIA Championship Game as early as possible with August home dates against Lincoln University and Simpson. They are one of 3 schools (Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon) which will play 11 games this season as they have an extra OOC matchup against the Raiders of Ashland.

Eastern Oregon will be running the gauntlet with 11 games in consecutive weeks which includes an extra OOC matchup against Montana Western along with Simpson and the defending NWC Champion Whitworth Pirates. They were a difficult team to get a read on last season but incremental improvements across the board could find them closer to the playoffs than many might expect.

Montana Tech was searching for an 11th game for an extra home game until recently, but without one being secured, they will not have a home game until October 5th. The upside of this is that 4 of their last 5 games of the regular season are at home in Butte, which should help mitigate some of the attrition of the season. [Edit: On March 27th, Montana Tech Football released their own schedule which includes an August 29th home game against Georgetown (KY). This will be a great test for the Orediggers as Georgetown reached the NAIA Semifinals last season.]

The Montana Western season is not what I would have expected. Given that they are against the clock to get their new stadium finished I thought they would have tried to start the season on the road, but they will open at home on September 7 with an OOC game against Eastern Oregon followed by hosting College of Idaho before hitting the road for their first road game at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. That game will be broadcast on the NWC Network.

The schedule for MSU-Northern is somewhere between disappointing and disjointed. They will only have 4 home games, and play 4 of their first 5 games on the road. That lone home game is a rematch of what was nearly a conference win for the Lights last season as they fell to Arizona Christian in the desert 21-20. The season opener will find them on the road to Mayville State to face the Comets who fell to the Lights 14-0 in Havre to open last season.

Like the Lights, the Battlin' Bears of Rocky Mountain College have the same schedule as last season, but inversed, as they open the season facing future conference-mate Dickinson State over in North Dakota before hosting the Lights in Billings. If they can keep their momentum from the latter stages of last season behind the quarterbacking of Graedyn Buell, RMC could find themselves in the playoff conversation when November 17th rolls around.

Southern Oregon really encapsulates the parity of Frontier Football. Before College of Idaho went on to reach the NAIA Semifinals, the Yotes found themselves on the losing end of their game with the Raiders to end the regular season which cost them a conference championship and home playoff date. As for this season, Southern Oregon will once again face CoI twice as well hosting Lincoln University and traveling down to Simpson in the first round of what will hopefully be a long and storied regional rivalry. Like Eastern Oregon, the Raiders will also play their 11 games consecutively from September 7th through November 16th.

The Frontier Conference season should give us some excellent football which will hopefully have a touch of chaos as 7 or 8 of the programs could make an argument why they will end up in the 20-team playoff field.