Here’s a perfect way to make the Big Ten season more fun than its ever been in 2020

The Big Ten is going to have a conference-only approach to 2020, and there are some ways to have fun with that. 

This upcoming College Football season is going to be a weird one, so the best way to have fun is to lean into that weirdness.

No conference has more to gain from the scheduling chaos than the Big Ten.

The conference has some of the best rivalries in all of college football, but oftentimes they’re lost in the shuffle of obsession over the SEC and ACC, especially when it comes to what games we routinely see in the late afternoon time slot in the fall.

Imagine Michigan and Ohio State facing off twice in 2020. The season starts at the Horseshoe but ends at The Big House, doubling the fun we usually have to wait a year to see.

Spread that across the conference, and it would create must-watch television every single week.

The Big Ten Championship would become much more important as well, assuming we get that far into the season. With the possibility of a second wave this winter, it’s possible that the College Football Playoff won’t even happen, making the Big Ten title game a de facto national championship for whatever the hell we’d want to call what the Big Ten season will be. If the road teams have to travel to get to the title game involves their rivals every week in, what self-respecting midwest college football fan wouldn’t enjoy every second of that action?

This could also reinvigorate rivalries that may have lost some of their luster in recent years. For example, with Minnesota’s resurgence under P.J. Fleck, Minnesota vs. Wisconsin could take on a second life if the teams faced off twice in 2020. Teams like Maryland or Rutgers who aren’t as well established in the conference could make headway in creating rivalries that will blossom in years to come. We haven’t heard much out of Purdue as of late, this might be a nice time for them to show up for once.

Basically, the very best college football has to offer boils down to how intense the rivalries are. Alabama vs Auburn matters because they hate each other so much and there’s always something on the line when they meet. The Big Ten has a unique opportunity to lean into the pre-packaged rivalries it has and reinvigorate the conference for years to come.