Indiana football adds 3 opponents to future schedules

Indiana’s football team has added Charlotte, Idaho and Georgia Southern to its future schedules.

The Hoosiers will face Georgia Southern in 2017. They’ll face Idaho in 2021 and 2022. They play Charlotte in 2022 and 2023. All of those games are in Bloomington. The Hoosiers have never faced any of the three teams.

IU also scheduled more games against opponents with existing game contracts.

They added three games against Ball State, two at home and one at Lucas Oil Stadium. They have three more against Western Kentucky, two of which are at home. They have two more against Florida International, one of which is at home.

A previously scheduled game against Massachusetts at home in 2017 has been moved to 2023.

The Big Ten will have a nine-game conference schedule starting next season. The league mandated that its schools cannot schedule non-conference games against schools from the Football Championship Subdivision, what used to be known as Division I-AA. Existing contracts, however, can be honored.

Big Ten teams have also agreed to schedule one non-conference game against another school from a “power five” conference — the Atlantic Coast, the Southeastern, the Big 12 and the Pacific-12.

Last month, IU announced three games against Louisville of the Atlantic Coast Conference from 2023 to 2025.

The Hoosiers’ games against Cincinnati and Connecticut, both of which play in the American Collegiate Conference, will count as “power five” games, a school spokesman said. There was no immediate explanation for why.

“We’ve been active in trying to get these things pinned down,” IU athletic director Fred Glass said. “It always starts with the (“power five”) opponents. You have to get that. Those are the hardest to get. And you try to get them home and away, in a way that works for getting seven home games.

“Even though we’ve put a huge premium on getting seven home games, we haven’t been successful in that every year.”

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A 2017 game against Norfolk State, an FCS school, has been canceled. IU had released the contract for the game last year. But an athletic department spokesman said the Hoosiers were able to escape the deal without penalty because it hadn’t been finalized.

Saturday’s home game against Florida International came after the Hoosiers paid $500,000 to escape a contract for two games against the University of South Florida.

IU paid $1,000,000 for Saturday’s game. It will receive $200,000 from FIU for an away game in 2016.

Glass said the money from adding a home game this season meant the switch carried a net cost of about $800,000.

He said building a program involves more than paying coaches higher salaries and improving facilities, both of which the Hoosiers have done.

“What I’ve come to believe is that scheduling is another component of something you really need to invest in if you want to build a winning football program,” Glass said. “Traditionally here — I think for economic reasons — we really hadn’t done that.”

Here are IU’s future non-conference football opponents:

2016 — Ball State, Wake Forest, at Florida International

2017 — at Virginia, Florida International, Georgia Southern

2018 — at Florida International, Virginia, Ball State

2019 — UConn, Western Kentucky, Ball State (Lucas Oil Stadium)

2020 — Ball State, at UConn, Western Kentucky

2021 — Cincinnati, Idaho, at Western Kentucky

2022 — at Cincinnati, Idaho, Charlotte

2023 — Louisville (Lucas Oil Stadium), UMass, Charlotte

2024 — at Louisville

2025 — Louisville