Iowa Football: Big Ten Releases New Fall Schedule

Note: This is an updating post as the conference schedule is released.

For the third time this year, the Iowa Hawkeyes are getting a new 2020 football schedule. Less than a week after announcing the conference would reverse course and bring football back to the spring, the conference released its second revised, conference-only schedule in as many months.

The conference is releasing the schedule live on FOX during the network’s Saturday morning college football Big Noon Saturday show. Unfortunately for Iowa fans, the schedule is coming over the course of an hour with a week-by-week release ensuring fans stay locked in to the network.

We know the schedule will include 8, conference-only games with 6 games against divisional opponents and 2 against crossover opponents. It’s presumed each team will have balance with 4 home games and 4 road games. While no official announcements have been made about the structure of the schedule, it is believed it will keep opponents the same as the original 2020 schedule with one crossover opponent falling off.

For Iowa, that means matchups with the six divisional opponents, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin. Iowa’s original crossover opponents included Michigan State, Penn State and Ohio State. In keeping the balance of home and away games, it’s believed one of Penn State and Ohio State would fall from the schedule.

Here’s a live look at how the schedule is shaping up:

Week 1: Iowa at Purdue

Week 2: Northwestern at Iowa

Week 3: Michigan State at Iowa

Week 4: Iowa at Minnesota

Week 5: Iowa at Penn State

Week 6: Nebraska at Iowa

Week 7: Iowa at Illinois

Week 8: Wisconsin at Iowa

So, to recap, Iowa is at Purdue, home against Northwestern, home against Michigan State, at Minnesota, at Penn State, home against Nebraska, at Illinois and home against Wisconsin in the final week of the regular season.

Then, as a reminder, the conference will be playing “Championship Week” on December 19th. The Big Ten Championship Game will move forward in Indianapolis, but the conference will also pit the 2nd place team in the West against the 2nd place team from the East, 3 vs. 3 and so on to round out the 9-game schedule.

Here’s a look at the conference slate as a whole:

Go Hawks!