Set your calendars.
If you’re the type who likes to plan ahead, good news — more information about the 2016 Iowa football schedule fell into place on Monday. The Big Ten officially announced the start times and TV listings for every game in the first three weeks of the season. We already knew that information for one of Iowa’s three games during that stretch (Iowa’s Week 2 game against Iowa State was previously announced as a primetime kickoff on BTN), but now we know when (and where on the TV dial) Iowa’s 2016 season is going to officially get underway: 2:30 PM CT on ESPNU on September 3rd. We also know when Iowa’s potentially scary game against North Dakota State will kick off: 11 AM CT on ESPN or ESPN2 on September 17th. Maybe the Bison will be sleepy at that early hour.
In all, we know the start times for just over half of Iowa’s regular season games this fall (7/12) and the TV assignments for just under half of those same games (5/12). The full listings are available below:
| WEEK | OPPONENT | TIME (CT) | TV |
| 9/3/16 | Miami (OH) | 2:30 PM | ESPNU |
| 9/10/16 | Iowa State | 6:30 PM | BTN |
| 9/17/16 | North Dakota State | 11:00 AM | ESPN/ESPN2 |
| 9/24/16 | at Rutgers | TBA | TBA |
| 10/1/16 | Northwestern | 11:00 AM | TBA |
| 10/8/16 | at Minnesota | TBA | TBA |
| 10/15/16 | at Purdue | 11:00 AM | TBA |
| 10/22/16 | Wisconsin | TBA | TBA |
| 10/29/16 | BYE | n/a | n/a |
| 11/5/16 | at Penn State | 6:30 PM | BTN |
| 11/12/16 | Michigan | 7:00 PM | ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 |
| 11/19/16 | at Illinois | TBA | TBA |
| 11/25/16 | Nebraska | TBA | TBA |
The remaining games on Iowa’s schedule will likely kick off at either 11 AM or 2:30 PM, although ESPN and BTN have both experimented with non-traditional start times in recent years, so those times aren’t locked in — it’s not inconceivable that Iowa could wind up with something 1 PM start or a 3:30 PM start.
The information for the Iowa-Nebraska game is not set, but if at least one of the teams is still playing for something (like, say, a Big Ten West championship), then there’s a pretty good chance that it will be a 2:30 PM kickoff. TV-wise, nothing has been officially announced yet, but that game has aired on ABC every year since it became an annual fixture when Nebraska joined the league in 2011 and there’s been no indication of that stopping anytime soon.
One other thing we do know: none of the TBA start times will be night games. The Big Ten’s entire night game schedule is locked into place now and there will be no further additions during the season.
The start times and TV assignments for Iowa’s remaining 2016 games won’t be announced until the season is underway — 6-12 days prior to kickoff for each game, to be more precise. So the information you see in the table above is the most that we’ll have until mid-September.