Big Ten reveals revised football schedule

The much anticipated release of the Big Ten’s revised schedule came Wednesday morning.

All teams will play 10 games — six divisional and four cross-division — with two byes built into the schedule for potential makeup games. The conference also said it’s constructed in a way that allows for the season to start as early as the weekend of Sept. 5 but provides the flexibility to move the start back to any point during the next three weekends. The Big Ten title game, slated for Dec. 5, could be moved back as late as Dec. 19.

For Wisconsin, here’s what the schedule looks like:

9/4 vs Indiana (Friday)
9/12 at Northwestern
9/19 at Nebraska
9/26 vs Minnesota
10/3 at Maryland
10/10 vs Purdue
10/17 BYE
10/24 vs Illinois
10/31 at Michigan
11/7 BYE
11/14 at Iowa
11/21 vs Rutgers

How it’s different:

As in the original slate, Wisconsin will open at home on Friday, Sept. 4 against Indiana. After that, though, things look a lot different.

Matchups at Northwestern and Nebraska — two games originally scheduled for November — will now be played in back-to-back weeks in September. The game against the Huskers was supposed to be in Madison but has been moved to Lincoln.

The league then moved the Purdue game that was originally set for West Lafayette to Camp Randall Stadium on Oct. 10.

The Minnesota game was moved up from Oct. 10 to Sept. 26. That date was originally supposed feature a trip to Michigan. The Badgers will now go to Ann Arbor on Oct. 31.

Wisconsin will face Illinois a week earlier than before on Oct. 24. After the trip to Michigan, the Badgers get their second bye week and then will go to Iowa on Nov. 14 and close the season against their new cross-division game against Rutgers on Nov. 21 in Madison.

The Big Ten also unveiled its testing requirements:

• All sports will be required to test a minimum of once weekly, while sports with high contact risk
will be required to test a minimum of twice weekly
• Required testing frequency is based upon the level of contact risk within the sport and is
required for student-athletes as well as coaches and additional staff members
• The Conference will coordinate centralized testing through a third-party testing laboratory for
consistency in surveillance and pre-competition testing
• The required testing, at this time, for COVID-19 must use polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
testing
• Institutions may supplement the required Conference testing with additional testing performed
for surveillance or clinical purposes

You can find the full list of protocols here.