Penn State Football: Schedule Due Out This Week, with a New End-of-Season Wrinkle

As the Big Ten announced on Wednesday morning a plan to return to play at the end of October, one thing is missing: the schedule.

But fear not, even if fans won’t be in attendance, they’ll still be able to dive into a brand new slate of games in the coming days according to Big Ten officials. And this schedule will come with a wrinkle.

“We will play eight games, plus one very unique champions’ week where the teams from the East and West will match up and play one another, two versus two, three versus three, four versus four, etc., with the championship game being played at the end of that week,” Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez said during a Zoom call.

Alvarez noted that the new format hasn’t been sorted out yet. Details like where the game would be played, and how to avoid rematches of previously scheduled contests still have to be decided. All the same, it’s a unique, fun and entertaining cross-divisional change to end the regular season.

Purdue AD Mike Bobinski told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that the eight-game schedule would be made up from the original nine-game slate that would have comprised a ‘normal’ 2020 season. In turn Penn State’s cross-divisional opponents were Iowa, Northwestern and at Nebraska, one of those three likely cut to reduce the schedule to eight games and maintain all previously scheduled east division contests.

And if this end-of-season format had held true in 2019, fans could have looked forward to a week of the following games.

• Ohio State/Wisconsin
• Penn State/Minnesota
• Michigan/Iowa
• Indiana/Illinois
• Michigan State/Purdue
• Maryland/Nebraska
• Rutgers/Northwestern

A battle of the worst in the conference the same week as the best? Sign us up.