ESPNOne quirk of the recent Big Ten expansion is that Penn State and Rutgers already had scheduled a pair of September nonconference games. Thus, their meeting in Week 3 this season functions as a league contest.
Outside of that exception, however, the Big Ten schedule is following a well-worn path: Teams take on out-of-league competition throughout September, and then conference action begins in October.
That will soon change. Thanks to both the arrival of the nine-game conference schedule in 2016 and a desire by the league to get its most-desired games front and center, the Big Ten is planning to stage more conference games early in the season, including opening week.
The league has already released its schedules through the 2019 season, which include two opening-week conference games: Ohio State-Indiana in 2017 and Purdue-Northwestern in 2018. At last month's Big Ten joint meetings, athletic directors were presented with models for September conference games well into the 2020s, including the possibilities for two or more Big Ten games in Week 1.
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