Making a few tweaks to its initial framework, the University of Wisconsin announced its 2013 football schedule Wednesday, including officially adding BYU to the slate.
The other major change is moving a Big Ten Conference game with Purdue from Oct. 26 to Sept. 21. The shift eliminates the possibility of Wisconsin playing eight straight weeks without a bye and gives both teams a chance to open conference play a week ahead of other schools.
"One of the things that I'm excited about is adding a conference game to that beginning four weeks of the schedule, much the same as the SEC does," Bielema said in a release. "It really does a nice job of highlighting your league, and it would allow us to maybe play more of a quality opponent earlier in the season."
The Badgers will open the season with home games against UMass on Aug. 31 and Tennessee Tech on Sept. 7 before traveling to face Arizona State on Sept. 14.
Because BYU wasn't able to play Sept. 21, Wisconsin had to shift its schedule around to make the game work.
Instead, the two teams will open up their home-and-home series Nov. 9 at Camp Randall Stadium. That date was originally set to be a bye week for Wisconsin, which is why the Badgers advocated moving the Purdue game to earlier in the season.
Bielema is happy to add BYU to the schedule and anticipates playing the Cougars often.
"I'm very excited because hopefully it's something that will continue to grow from here," Bielema said. "There have been talks beyond next year, and that's very intriguing to me.
"I think it showed willingness on our part to make this BYU game happen. We did everything we could to make the 2013 schedule as good as we could."
Wisconsin and BYU have met just once before, in 1980, when Jim McMahon led BYU to a 28-3 victory in Madison.
A look at the full schedule:
Aug. 31: UMass
Sept. 7: Tennessee Tech
Sept. 14: At Arizona State
Sept. 21: Purdue
Sept. 28: At Ohio State
Oct. 12: Northwestern
Oct. 19: At Illinois
Nov. 2: At Iowa
Nov. 9: BYU
Nov. 16: Indiana
Nov. 23: At Minnesota
Nov. 30: Penn State
Dec. 7: Big Ten Championship
