Iowa’s primetime kickoffs announced

Iowa's home football games against Pittsburgh (Sept. 19) and Minnesota (Nov. 14) will kick off at 7 p.m., the UI announced Friday.

The games had previously been announced as primetime. The Kinnick Stadium games will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.

On Thursday, BTN announced a few of the kickoffs for its primetime football games this fall.

Iowa athletics director Gary Barta once said that two night kickoffs at Kinnick would be difficult for Iowa to stage, but Big Ten night games have been a success and so that stance has changed.

'For the last five years, the night game experiment, if you'd like to call it that, across the Big Ten has highly successful,” Barta said. 'Fans have loved it, television has loved it. So, if I said that five years ago, and I remember saying that, it was relative to the experience at the time.”

Iowa was shut out of home night games the last two seasons. Kinnick Stadium's last night game was the unfortunate 38-14 beating the Hawkeyes took at the hands of Penn State. In 2013, the Hawkeyes kicked off at 5 p.m. in a victory at Iowa State.

These two night games have a couple of solid news pegs that might've helped push Iowa into the prime-time schedule.

Former Michigan State defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi will bring his first edition of the Pitt Panthers into Kinnick. Narduzzi served as Mark Dantonio's defensive coordinator for the rise of the Spartans program.

BTN's prime time schedule will close with the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry game between Iowa and Minnesota. Iowa has won six of the last 10, but Minnesota erased a lot of that from its fan base's memory with last season's lopsided 51-14 victory over the Hawkeyes.

It's the first prime time matchup between the Hawkeyes and Gophers at Kinnick Stadium.

Departures

- It's never good when Iowa football players start tweeting after 800 or so days, but that happened twice in the last week.

(Of course, you know that Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz has banned players from Twitter, so it's a sure sign of a departure when they start tweeting again. Or it usually is, like 9 times out of 10.)

Defensive back Malik Rucker has left the program, Iowa acknowledged earlier this week.

Rucker played in six games in 2014, recording five tackles. 'We have honored Malik's request to be released from his scholarship and we wish him well in the future,” Ferentz said in a statement.

Linebacker John Kenny also will move on, according to HawkeyeReport.com. He also started tweeting this week after 839 days.

Rucker and Kenny were third-teamers coming out of spring. Kenny spent time as a starter at fullback in 2014, but with seniors Macon Plewa and Adam Cox healthy, he shifted back to linebacker, where he began his Iowa career. He didn't make much headway depth chart-wise coming out of spring. Same for Rucker.

If you want to scream bloody murder over third-teamers transferring, now is the time.

Iowa's 2015 kickoff times

Sep. 5

Illinois State RedBirds (Kinnick Stadium) - TBA

Sep. 12

at Iowa State Cyclones (Jack Trice Stadium, Ames) - TBA

Sep. 19

Pittsburgh Panthers (Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City) - 7 p.m. (Big Ten Network)

Sep. 26

North Texas Mean Green (Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City) - TBA

Oct. 3

at Wisconsin Badgers (Camp Randall Stadium, Madison, Wis.) - TBA

Oct. 10

Illinois Fighting Illini (Kinnick Stadium) - TBA

Oct. 17

at Northwestern Wildcats (Ryan Field, Evanston, Ill.) - TBA

Oct. 24

--- Open Date ---

Oct. 31

Maryland Terrapins (Kinnick Stadium) - TBA

Nov. 7

at Indiana Hoosiers (Memorial Stadium, Bloomington, Ind.) - TBA

Nov. 14

Minnesota Golden Gophers (Kinnick Stadium) - 7 p.m. (Big Ten Network)

Nov. 21

Purdue Boilermakers (Kinnick Stadium) - TBA

Nov. 27 (Friday)

at Nebraska Cornhuskers (Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb.) - TBA

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com