If football is going to happen in the Big Ten this fall, it will be under a modified schedule.
The conference has released its new ten-game conference-only schedule to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and there are a handful of notable changes. However the season will start as planned the week of September 3.
For Michigan State fans the biggest change is the flipping of locations for the Michigan and Indiana games. Michigan State will now travel to Ann Arbor and host Indiana, same as the 2019 season. MSU also adds an end-of-season game on the road against Nebraska. The Spartans lost to the Cornhuskers in Lincoln in 2018.
MSU will now open the season hosting Minnesota instead of previously scheduled opponent Northwestern. That game has now moved to week three. Every Big Ten team has two scheduled bye weeks and an open week at the end of the season to help with flexibility int he event of postponements or rescheduling.
Currently two Big Ten teams, Rutgers and Michigan State, are under a team-wide quarantine after COVID-19 outbreaks within the program. MSU is scheduled to end quarantine Wednesday, while Rutgers recently announced its number of cases on the team had almost doubled from 15 to 28. Northwestern also stopped workouts this week due to a positive test within their ranks.
