This Saturday’s college football schedule has been one the executives at ABC have been salivating over since the 2002 non-conference match-ups were announced a little over a year ago.

The No. 6 team in the nation, Michigan, makes the coveted pilgrimage to South Bend this weekend to take on Tyrone Willingham and the undefeated Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

A resurgent Penn State, back in the top 25, hosts No. 7-ranked and national runner-up Nebraska in a showdown at one of the most prestigious college football stadiums in the country.

Ohio State and Washington State, ranked Nos. 8 and 11 respectively, collide with one another at the Horseshoe in a week three match-up that already has BCS implications written all over it.

Aside from Saturday being an extremely entertaining afternoon for any college football fan across the nation, it also provides the Big Ten conference with an opportunity to regain, on national television, the respect it once had in the late ’90s.

Michigan State and Purdue will have their cracks at Notre Dame in the weeks to come, and Michigan has already proved its grit in a nail-biting season opener against Washington.

While the rest of the conference powerhouses are given their chance to shine in the national spotlight in the games prior to Big Ten opener, Wisconsin has been pitted against the likes of UNLV and Northern Illinois, among other not-so-worthy opponents.

Four years removed from back-to-back Rose Bowls, and already the Badgers have disappeared from the marquee non-conference match-ups that formerly characterized the opening weeks of their season.

Anyone complaining?

When Wisconsin opens up Big Ten play Oct. 5 against Penn State, it will do so with experience, confidence and health — something it has lacked the past few years.

Not only will this cushy, five-game non-conference schedule provide the Badgers ample time to piece together their inexperienced defense, it gives quarterback Brooks Bollinger time to familiarize himself with the young offensive backs, and it allows Barry Alvarez and the coaching staff to experiment with different game plans before the competition intensifies.

The offense needs more time to gain some consistency, while the kickers could use the time for more experience. The defensive unit still needs a few more games under its belt before being tested by a Penn State-like offense, and the coaching staff has the luxury of not wearing out its playmakers too early in the season.

There is no rush to put Lee Evans back in the starting lineup, and Brandon Williams and Jonathan Orr can acclimate themselves to the pace of college football with an extremely flexible learning curve.

In a sport where one or two losses can dampen the fate of an entire season, Wisconsin couldn’t have assembled a more perfect lineup heading into the 2002 season.

The Badgers will more than likely open up with a 5-0 record, something their Big Ten counterparts will struggle to do in the face of their fierce competition.

Those five wins alone will not only instill an enormous sense of confidence in the Badgers, they will put them two wins away from an almost guaranteed bowl game.

The last two times the Badgers opened up 5-0, they won the Rose Bowl.

But that’s still a long ways away. Three games into the season, there are still a lot of questions to be answered in all aspects of Wisconsin’s attack.

Nevertheless, conference play or not, the tone of a football team’s season is generally set in the opening month or so.

Take a look back at last year. Wisconsin entered the 2001 season with an extremely similar team to the one that opened up play three weeks ago.

Rather than experiencing the benefits of playing mediocre non-conference opponents, the Badgers were thrown straight into the lion’s den. A week two loss to Joey Harrington’s Oregon Ducks was followed by defeat at the hands of David Carr and surprisingly talented Fresno State.

After opening up 1-2, Wisconsin went on to finish with a dismal 5-7 record, in large part due to the lack of time the team had to gel together early and gain the confidence necessary to compete in the Big Ten.

These first five weeks for the Badgers more closely resemble an NFL preseason than the non-conference portion of a college football team’s schedule.

While it may be argued that the lack of challenge prior to conference play will hurt a team more than it will help it, Wisconsin will take it chances.

It’s better to be 5-0 with chemistry and confidence than 3-2 with losses coming to worthy opponents.

Football teams can’t win championships in September, but they can certainly take themselves out of them.

At least the Badgers won’t have to worry about that.