When the Big Ten announced that conference schedules would move from eight games to nine, it added a new rule. In 2015, the conference announced that teams could no longer schedule FCS teams as part of the non-conference schedule. This was because teams could now only schedule 3 out of conference games, and using one of those for an FCS team was seen as a way to weaken ones schedule.
With this new rule, we believed that Purdue’s game against Eastern Kentucky last season would be the last FCS team Purdue would ever host (Purdue won that game 45-24 and is undefeated against all FCS teams, a record that some other B1G schools cannot claim).