Another Fine Reason to Hate the Big Ten Big Wigs

Here's a crazy idea; how about a 10th Conference game instead?

The days of the Big Ten Conference concluding its football season the week before Thanksgiving appear to be over.

Beginning next season, the University of Wisconsin and other Big Ten schools will be allowed to incorporate an extra bye week into their 12-game regular schedule and play games after Thanksgiving.

The Big Ten presidents voted recently to allow teams to play after Thanksgiving and UW athletic director Barry Alvarez shared that news Friday with the UW Athletic Board.

According to Alvarez, UW coach Bret Bielema has contacted Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz about moving the teams' Oct. 18 game at Iowa to later in the season.

UW has its bye scheduled for Nov. 22. That would be Week 13 of the season. Iowa is scheduled to play at Minnesota that day so it is conceivable that UW and Iowa could agree to move the game to Nov. 29.

One sticking point, though, is that the Hawkeyes don't have a game scheduled for Oct. 25. So if Ferentz agreed to move the UW game, the Hawkeyes would be off for two weeks in the middle of the season.

"We'd have to take someone in the league who would agree to move their game until after Thanksgiving," Alvarez said. (Bret) has talked to Kirk about it. . . . And if Iowa doesn't want to do it, we'll just try to find somebody.

"You need an open date. That is too hard; 12 straight weeks is hard."

Yeah, that's it. It helps explain why all those Alvarez-coached football teams got beat by all those SEC teams in bowl games. Those 12 straight weeks of playing (plus a month-plus off) are too darn hard when facing a team that's probably played what, 13? 14 games?

All those years hanging out with Donna Shalala have made you soft Barry. There an athletic department speech code coming in the works too?