In 2010, the Big Ten will start ending their season the weekend after Thanksgiving instead of the weekend before. This is not unprecendented (we used to end after Thanksgiving most years in the 90’s before the Big Ten changed to a “give the teams a chance to be home with their families for the holiday” policy).

This change has a number of positive effects:
1. Shortens the layoff between final game and bowls, making it more comparable to other conferences. A few teams play the first weekend in December, but it’s mostly just the championship games.
2. Allows for the conference schedule to be set up such that we have 4 weeks in the beginning of the season for 4 OOC games. Thus, we won’t have to play the odd OOC game in the middle of conference play (like Eastern Illinois in October in 2009).
3. Allows for a bye in the middle of the seasone very year which can be helpful to rest, heal injured players, and work on issues that have developed in the first half of the season

Please note that 2008 was an atypical year with an extra week in the calender so there was a bye and all conference games in the beginning. Most years, with the 12 game schedule, ending before Thanksgiving would mean 12 straight weeks of games.

Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t there a specific number of practices allowed between the final game and a bowl game? If so, it could be beneficial to have tyour “regular season” practices go later and then have only 26 days to fill with your “special bowl practices” rather than 40 days. Anyone know?

The only way you can “just schedule a 13th game” is if you play a game at Hawai’i. A team can’t just schedule an extra game on a whim (if they could, they would, just for the extra revenue).