Big Ten Announces 2014 Prime Time Football Schedule

But some dates are missing....so this won't be the end of them.

By Andy York@yorka1982 Apr 22, 2014, 4:06pm CDT

The Buckeyes enjoy four prime-time games to lead the Big Ten

The Big Ten announced six prime time football games that will be aired on the Big Ten Network this fall today. This coupled with an earlier six games announced by ESPN/ABC last weekend will be the majority of the night games in the Big Ten this season. However, this list does not include games that the Big Ten does not control such as road games, and a few other notable games that will still be announced.

What games are those you ask? Well in the initial press release and article that ESPN's Big Ten blog wrote, both the Gophers' Thursday night opener against Eastern Illinois, and Michigan State's Friday night opener against Jacksonville State were both listed as being Big Ten Network Prime Time games. Suddenly, they aren't listed any longer and are back to TBA status? I'm guessing both will end up being BTN aired games anyways, but interesting that they were initially listed and now are not. As of right now, five Big Ten schools do not have a prime time game this season on ABC/ESPN or BTN. They are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana and Purdue. As stated, this will most likely change as the Gopher's Thursday night opener will be aired on BTN...its just a matter of when it is announced. Again, this list also does not include games that the Big Ten has no control of, so while Wisconsin will play LSU Saturday August 31st in Houston at 8 Pm on ESPN, because it is not a Big Ten controlled game, it is not on this list.

The other major surprise, or maybe it shouldn't be after all, is that the Big Ten's two new teams, Rutgers and Maryland are getting the red carpet rolled out for them when it comes to prime time televised games. Rutgers gets two home prime time games to show the bright lights of Piscataway I guess, and Maryland will host the latest Big Ten night game ever when the Spartans come to College Park on November 15th. As you can read here, the Michigan State media is not pleased with that development.

Ahh yes. November Big Ten night games. This is a thing now. While they just dip their big toe in with two November games, the aforementioned MSU/Maryland game on November 15th, and Illinois at Ohio State on November 1st, you can expect more to come if these go well. As Adam Rittenberg puts in in the ESPN Big Ten Blog story on the games, one reason for not a full onslaught of Big Ten night games is the heavy emphasis on divisional games late in November, and the Big Ten not wanting anything to go off-kilter in games that can determine who will be playing for the Big Ten Championship in a few weeks. Will this change in the future? Only time will tell.

So here is the list of as of now scheduled Big Ten games to be aired on ABC/ESPN and the BTN so far. Also after each game will be a .gif reaction shot of how we feel about that game being a prime time game, and not relegated to an 11 am kickoff like plenty of Gopher games will undoubtedly be once again. So with no further adieu: