College Football Week 1 Thursday/Friday Schedule: Big Ten schedule opens up early

College football has officially arrived. With the NFL going to three preseason games, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend is free for the NCAA to schedule games, and this year a few schools and conferences are starting off their season a day or two earlier than in seasons past.

Perhaps no conference is embracing these early weeknight games quite like the Big Ten, however, which has a pair of conference games before Saturday even arrives. One such game kicks off on Thursday evening, with Penn State visiting Purdue, and on Friday the Indiana Hoosiers will play host to Illinois.

These are the only Power-5 conference games set to kick off before the first real Saturday of the season, which traditionally ends up holding a handful of big non-conference matchups. Indeed, Saturday’s schedule has a top-five matchup as well as another game between two teams in the top 11.

But those games can wait for another day or two. Instead, we’ll focus on these Big Ten games and a couple other contests that will be on the primary sports networks. That Penn State-Purdue game has a fun bit of trivia associated with it as well:

Sounds like a fair trade, no?

Here are the schedules for Thursday and Friday and join us here in the comments throughout both days of games.