The Purdue Football Schedule Is Out – This is Not a Recording

(Graphic Credits: Purdue Athletics)

Over the weekend, the Big Ten rolled out their third football schedule for the 2020 season. This one will begin the weekend of October 24. According to sources, coaches and ADs were pushing for October 10 or October 17, as it’s a lot easier to be part of the College Football Playoff if you get your season going before, you know, Halloween.

Of course, inclusion in the CFPlayoff really only applies to Ohio State and, well, in the minds of Lincoln residents, any of Tom Osborne’s teams. (Seriously, can you imagine a Scott Frost QB’ed team trying to come back against a modern day Clemson or Alabama? Scotty boy rarely had to throw the ball, but when he did, he completed passes at a clip of just a shade over 50%. Woof.)

It will be an eight game season, followed by a ninth crossover game where your opponent will be the team in the corresponding position in the standings in the opposite division…which sounds super cool for the top few spots, but is decidedly less exciting when you get down to Rutgers-Northwestern. Indiana-Nebraska should be fun, though.

Purdue’s original schedule – if you can remember back that far – had some worrisome land mines in it, including Memphis, Air Force and a trip to BC. Given Jeff Brohm’s 0-3 in openers at Purdue history, the Labor Day weekend tilt at the Huskers was sure to be BP-raising if nothing else. But that was quickly wiped away by the pandemic and we moved to a conference-only schedule that featured @Michigan, vsOhio State and @Wisconsin within the first five weeks, with the “reprieves” in there being Iowa an @Illinois. Whoo-boy.

But then that got scrapped literally like two days later when the Big Ten decided to be the first Power 5 conference to cancel the season entirely, fully expecting the other power conferences to follow suit within the next week or so. Only the Pac 12 did because without their traditional Rose Bowl foes available, what was the point, really? Oh, and the entre left coast is on fire so breathing was going to be even more difficult.

We can debate what caused the Big Ten to reverse course but that’s honestly kind of boring at this point. The conference claims they got more comfortable with rapid testing and the protocols being put in place. Most people tend to think the fallout of not playing for a whole season while other conferences did play – coupled with, oh yeah, money issues – is more the cause of the reversal. People in Ohio think their heroes in Columbus are the reason. The Mensa members in cornland are convinced the ruckus they made is what “scared” the Big Ten into acting. The only person who sat down with pen and paper and mapped out what a season in the Spring could look like, though, was Jeff Brohm, so I think it’s fair to say he prompted the conference to understand that they could fit this in….and that even a shortened season in the Fall was preferable to trying to play in the Spring.

The unfortunate byproduct is that the season being back on now has made the most delirious among the Purdue fanbase hold out hope that maybe Rondale Moore will survey the landscape, take note of how much the conference seems to have its sh-t together, and decide that, yes, he’ll come back for eight games of empty stadiums and freezing nights. It’s not happening, folks.

So what is happening? Well, Football Schedule V3.0 is a lot kinder to Purdue than the previous two iterations, so that’s something. Purdue is slated to play just nine games, which is something that hasn’t happened since about 1964. If there are bowls and they play ten, then we go back to 1971 for the last time they only played that many. (This was a cursory check – don’t bug me.)

The only road game that’s gives Purdue fans the shakes is the trip to Madison on November 7. Otherwise, they travel to Illinois, Minnesota and IU. Remember, too, that there will presumably no or few fans in these locations, so while that will be a little jarring at Wisconsin, the game will feel normal in Bloomington.

Purdue hosts Iowa (who Brohm seems to own), Northwestern (who Brohm inexplicably has trouble with), Rutgers (let’s not talk about it) and Nebraska (who might be reeling from having been trucked so many times by December 5.

After the Bucket game on 12/12, Purdue will face the cross-division foe who finishes in the same spot as them. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Last year’s opponent would have been 1-8 (in conf) Maryland. But because Purdue’s end of season rivalry game with IU is already a cross-division matchup, per the rules of 2020, they could theoretically be matched up with IU again the following weekend. I love weird sports things like this so I would be fine with it. But I saw one unconfirmed claim on twitter that this actually can’t happen. However, the details of Champions Week as they’re calling it (presumably to make Nebraska feel like the champs they still think they deserve to be) are still undisclosed. The Big Ten’s official schedule release says “Details surrounding Big Ten Champions Week will be announced at a later time.”

Sure, no need to rush, guys. I especially like that they hedged and didn’t even tell us when we’ll know – just that it’ll be at a later time. Hell, could be the night before those games, given the way the conference has communicated of late.

Regardless, this schedule looks like a hell of a lot of fun for Boilermaker fans. And ten wins is still a possibility. Choo choo.