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Report: Big Ten to no longer schedule FCS opponents

Big Ten fans surely don't want to see scenes like Appalachian State's victory over Michigan in 2007. (AP Photo by Duane Burleson)

Big Ten fans surely don't want to see scenes like Appalachian State's victory over Michigan in 2007. (AP Photo by Duane Burleson)

The Big Ten Conference agreed to no longer schedule nonconference games against teams from the Football Championship Subdivision, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez made the announcement on his monthly radio show Tuesday night. No official word from the conference has been made public.

According to Alvarez, Big Ten officials recently agreed to the measure. Wisconsin is set to face FCS opponent Tennessee Tech on Sept. 7 and is the only FCS opponent on their schedule. It was reported in August that Michigan will face Appalachian State in September 2014. Michigan was beaten by Appalachian State 34-32 to open the 2007 season in one college football's biggest upsets ever.

“The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on radio station WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing…So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

Alvarez also said that geography will play a role to realign the conference's divisions to incorporate Maryland and Rutgers. The scheduling agreement is most likely to take place after the two new schools join the league for the 2014 season.

“You’ve got a couple schools on the bubble,” Alvarez said. "If you went straight geography, let’s start west: Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois and probably Purdue is the way it seems to break down. I know Michigan State was lobbying in the West Division instead of the East.”