There has generally been an unspoken rule over the years about when football games get played.
Friday nights belong to high schools. Saturdays are all about college football. Sundays are the exclusive property of the NFL.
With very few exceptions, those boundaries have long been held sacred. The NFL generally doesn’t add Saturday games to its schedule until December, when the college regular season is over, and the rare Friday night college game is usually a mid-major game that most people don’t care about.
That nice, happy structure was violated last week when the Big Ten announced that it would be scheduling Friday night games beginning in 2017.
Dumbth isn’t a proper English word, and that’s probably a good thing. Because I can’t really wrap my head around the magnitude of dumbth involved in this decision.
The Big Ten, in theory, is trying to expand its audience. But it’s probably not going to happen. And even if it does, it’ll come at the expense of the high schools that the conference’s schools are banking on as feeder systems.
Think about it. Let’s say the Big Ten schedules a Friday night game next September between Northwestern and Indiana, and the Hoosiers are hosting. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Bloomington North and Bloomington South are both playing at home — or even better, playing each other — that same night.
What then?
Many IU fans are likely also fans of some local high school team, whether in Bloomington or elsewhere in the area. Is the Big Ten ready to make those fans choose? They’re not going to win the ones who have kids on those high school teams, that’s for sure.
And what about the IU coaches who might have kids playing for local high schools? In the current structure of things, the fathers can go watch their sons Friday and the kids can watch the dads work on Saturday. In the future, there might be some conflicts.
If people are forced to choose between games, someone’s market share is going to suffer. And sure, the Big Ten will get the same TV money as it’s always gotten. Maybe more. But the gate receipts will take a hit. Purdue can’t come close to filling its stadium now unless an opponent’s fans are doing the filling. You think having a game at Ross-Ade on a Friday night when all of their area high schools are playing is going to help that situation?
It’s either hurting the colleges or it’s hurting the high schools. It’ll probably hurt both, and that’s something that doesn’t need to happen — especially for the high schools, who don’t have the luxury of banking on TV money.
I know Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany opposed the wildly popular idea of a college football playoff forever, but this is a bad move even by his standards.
And never mind the subject of ticket sales. What’s this going to do to the Big Ten in terms of recruiting?
It’s hard enough to convince elite players to come spend four years in such exotic locations as Bloomington, West Lafayette and Champaign, Illinois. What’s going to happen when those teams end up losing a night of Friday night scouting because they have their own games?
The schools know it (which is probably why Michigan is refusing to take part in Friday games).
“It kills us with recruiting,” one Big Ten assistant told ESPN.com. “One of the best things about our place is the game-day environment. Those kids won’t be able to experience that, because they will all have their games.”
One would assume that high schools would be livid about the Big Ten’s decision. But then there was Bobby Cox, the commissioner of the IHSAA, issuing a jaw-dropping statement last week in which he said that it “represents a positive opportunity to collectively cross promote our football programs and continue to grow this great sport in our state.”
Cross-promotion usually doesn’t work when you present potential consumers with an either-or choice. That’s what the Big Ten is doing here.
Of course, there’s one rock-solid way for fans to show their displeasure with the Big Ten — don’t show up. Having to air six Friday night games in empty stadiums next year might make the conference think twice about all of this.
