IOWA CITY — A 10-game Big Ten football schedule has the potential to disrupt the annual Iowa-Iowa State football series. Iowa, like most high-major football programs, prefers to play seven home games each year to help fund the athletics department. Iowa earns about $2.8 million per home date. A 10-game Big Ten schedule would prevent [...]

Perhaps no Big Ten official had more reason to be miffed about the Big Ten’s initial divisional alignment than Wisconsin Athletics Director Barry Alvarez. Wisconsin was placed opposite from Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska when the Big Ten split into two divisions for the 2011 football season. Wisconsin was scheduled as a permanent cross-divisional rival with [...]

CHICAGO — When Bret Bielema plays blackjack in Las Vegas, he’s the type of player who get a pair of face cards off the deal. Whether he splits them or keeps the 20, he seems to come up roses. Bielema, a former Iowa team captain now entering his seventh year at Wisconsin, met his new wife, [...]

The Big Ten’s realignment process produced one key casualty among the league’s football rivalries: Iowa-Wisconsin. The schools had played 72 of 74 years before the Big Ten added Nebraska as its 12th member for the 2011 school year. When the league split into two divisions based not on geography but competitive equality, the Iowa-Wisconsin rivalry [...]

CHICAGO — Wisconsin Athletics Director Barry Alvarez said he was surprised with how quickly Jarrod Uthoff’s transfer case escalated into a national story last month. “The thing got out of hand so fast and it was in the media so fast and in the social media so fast the process never really had a chance [...]

Many of the particulars of this week’s transfer controversy involving Wisconsin’s athletics program and Cedar Rapids Jefferson graduate Jarrod Uthoff were set in motion two years ago when Wisconsin sought a signed Iowa recruit during a coaching change. Ben Brust, Cody Larson, Zach McCabe and Devyn Marble signed letters of intent in November 2009 to [...]

IOWA CITY — Cedar Rapids Jefferson graduate Jarrod Uthoff will have a chance to earn a basketball scholarship for any program outside the Big Ten. The question is, does he want to play in the Big Ten? Uthoff, a 6-foot-8 forward, received permission Thursday from Wisconsin athletics officials, including Athletics Director Barry Alvarez, to contact [...]

IOWA CITY — Wisconsin and Iowa have a bond forged well beyond the 110-mile border that pits the state on opposite sides of the Mississippi River. The schools are separated by 175 miles and before Iowa and Wisconsin became states, they were linked as the Wisconsin territory. But the current Iowa-Wisconsin sports rivalry is more [...]

CHICAGO — Bret Bielema’s intensity — and a desire to succeed — has elevated the Wisconsin football program to sizzling heights in his five-plus seasons. In 2006, the 41-year-old Bielema took over Wisconsin as one of the nation’s youngest coaches at age 36. He maintained the program’s excellence under Hall of Famer Barry Alvarez and [...]

(NOTE: This is the 10th and final chapter in a multi-part series on how the Big Ten Conference divided into two football divisions) CHICAGO — Three months after its football divisions were unveiled, the Big Ten had yet to roll out a new logo and its division names.  The division christening process was challenging at [...]