This Saturday, Memorial Stadium will host Homecoming week’s central activity: the football game against the University of Minnesota.

Minnesota, however, will not play its own Homecoming game until Nov. 1, when it plays Northwestern University.

And Northwestern will have already finished their own celebrations on Oct. 18.

The annual tradition celebrating alumni and football kicked off its weeklong festivities at Illinois last Saturday and events continue through this Saturday. Other Big Ten schools, however, have different Homecoming schedules and activities.

“Our Homecoming festivities start the Friday beforehand, so we’ve got nine days of festivities,” said Megan Halverson, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the school’s Homecoming committee.

Wisconsin, like Illinois, has a parade and a Homecoming kick-off. Unlike Illinois, Wisconsin will feature a charity 5K walk/run and charity golfing. The proceeds from those events, as well as others during the week, go to the Student Crisis Loan fund, Halverson said. The fund provides loans to students going through an unexpected financial hardship.

Other popular events include an air band competition and a cardboard boat race, with different student organizations constructing their own boats and competing against each other.

“Our Homecoming ends up being a competition,” Halverson said. “It gets pretty intense with some of them.”

Wisconsin’s Homecoming game will be against Illinois.

“It’s a close rivalry that we get to play off of,” Halverson said. “We are very excited that it is Illinois coming.”

Christine Wagner, a freshman at the University of Iowa, said she enjoyed Iowa’s Homecoming despite the team’s loss to Northwestern University.

“It was fun because I was involved,” said Wagner, who is a member of a student organization that plans concert events at Iowa. “Every year there’s a Homecoming concert,” she said. “This year we had Rooney and Chuck Berry.”

Iowa’s Homecoming events included a barbecue, pep rally, window decorating and movies.

“Sunday night there was a movie outside, and they played the Incredible Hulk and had free pizza,” Wagner said. “I think if you get involved it’s more fun than if you sit back and do nothing.”