It’s safe to say the 2013 season won’t look much like the 2012 version for Wisconsin as Head Coach Bret Bielema pulled a few rabbits out of the hat allowing the athletic department to finally announce the 2013 schedule.
As rumored all over the place, the Badgers will play BYU in 2013, but not on the date that most people thought. Instead they will take on the Cougars at Camp Randall on Nov. 9th. Yes, you’re seeing that correctly, they’ll be playing BYU in the middle of the Big Ten schedule.
It was thanks to some flexibility from the conference and from Purdue that allowed the game to happen and also allow for the Badgers to not play eight games in a row. The Purdue game was previously scheduled for Oct. 26th, but it’s been moved to Sept. 21st and allows the Badgers not one, but two bye weeks in the month of October.
According to the statement released by the athletic department Bielema has long been a fan of having a conference game in September.
“One of the things that I’m excited about is adding a conference game to that beginning four weeks of the schedule, much the same as the SEC does,” he said in a statement. “It really does a nice job of highlighting your league and it would allow us to maybe play more of a quality opponent earlier in the season.”
It also appears that Wisconsin is looking forward to possibly starting a bit of a common schedule with the Cougars of BYU going forward.
“I’m very excited because hopefully it’s something that will continue to grow from here,” Bielema said in a press release. “There have been talks beyond next year and that’s very intriguing to me.”
The rest of the non-conference schedule features UMASS (2nd year as an FBS program), FCS opponent Tennessee Tech, and a trip to Tempe, AZ to take on the Sun Devils. UMASS and Arizona State were teams already known to be on the schedule
So, having said all of that the schedule for 2013 looks like this:
Aug. 31 UMASS
Sept. 7 TENNESSEE TECH
Sept. 14 at Arizona State
Sept. 21 PURDUE*
Sept. 28 at Ohio State
Oct. 5 BYE WEEK
Oct. 12 NORTHWESTERN
Oct. 19 at Illinois
Oct. 26 BYE WEEK
Nov. 2 at Iowa
Nov. 9 BYU
NOV. 16 INDIANA
Nov. 23 at Minnesota
NOV. 30 PENN STATE
Dec. 7 Big Ten Championship
(Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, Ind.)
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
