Friday Night Lights: The Case Against ESPN Friday Night College Football

by T Kyle King on Jun 13, 2007 7:38 AM EDT in Football

I am a longtime subscriber to the theory that there is no such thing as too much college football. However, I may have to revise that view somewhat.

Obviously, college football on Saturdays is a wonderful thing, as attested to by the name of the most popular college football weblog out there. Thursday night football is a terrific invention for reasons that go above and beyond the opportunity it provides for making fun of Georgia Tech. I even enjoy seeing non-B.C.S. conference football in the middle of the week.

Friday night college football, though, may be unwise for the health of the sport.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy watching a good Friday night college football game on television, but I question whether the scheduling of such contests on the traditional night for high school football games might constitute a first step onto the slippery slope towards killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Consider the experience of major league baseball, a sport whose struggles are well documented:

Football and [b]asketball have passed [b]aseball in popularity among today[']s youth in America. . . . This crosses over to all races in this country. Look at the amount of foreign players currently on MLB rosters. All of Latin America, Japan, and Korea are doing a better job developing young baseball prospects. Why is the youth in America losing interest in [b]aseball? Ask yourself this question. What are the top sports played in American [h]igh [s]chools today? If you answered [f]ootball and [b]asketball you are correct. Here [are] a couple more questions to ask yourself. When was the last time you [saw] children out in the street playing catch with a ball and glove? When was the last time you observed a group of children playing a pick-up game of baseball at a local diamond or in a[n] open field? For me it's been a while. The interest in this sport is dying at the recreational level.

The author's assessment is more accurate than his syntax. Major league baseball moved in the direction of scheduling more night games, particularly during the postseason, in order to boost television revenue. This has had an adverse affect on viewership, particularly among the young, who cannot stay up late enough to see the end (or, oftentimes, even the beginning) of a World Series game.

Baseball's focus on short-term financial gain has been detrimental to the long-term health of the game. Interest in the sport is declining among American youth, so much so that baseball has come to be known as "The Dominican Pastime."

This fall, in an effort to combat the decline in ratings for the Fall Classic, the World Series will begin on a Wednesday and thereby avoid a Friday night game. This scheduling policy essentially means that World Series games will take place only on school nights, when children will need to be asleep earlier in the evening. More and more young people will be watching less and less baseball.

By shifting away from its historic practice of afternoon games---a tradition once embodied in the absence of lights at Wrigley Field; an institutional decision conducive to allowing fathers to take their sons to games---major league baseball has hampered the ability of its fans to perpetuate the popularity of the game by sharing it with the rising generation. Partly as a consequence, young Americans have shifted their focus to basketball, football, and soccer, sports whose regular season and postseason games are available for viewing during daylight hours.

I wonder whether, two decades hence, we will look back on the Worldwide Leader's decision to begin airing Friday night college football games as a similar sea change that made immediate financial sense yet ultimately caused more harm than good. After all, an opportunity cost of staying home to watch a college football game on ESPN is not going out to watch a high school football game live and in person.

If Friday night college football games cause a decline in attendance at Friday night high school football games, what effect will that have on local schools, booster clubs, communities, and, most importantly, players? For those student-athletes seeking the greatest amount of adulation from the crowd, might the presence of fewer fans in the stands incline them in the direction of better-supported sports? In extreme instances, might some school systems with marginal athletic budgets opt to drop football altogether if declining interest and attendance make the continuation of such programs financially untenable?

The popularity of football at all levels of competition leads me to believe that Friday night college football will not prove ruinous to the health of the game at the high school level, but it might steer some communities or particular players in the direction of other pursuits, producing a gradual decline in the levels of talent and interest available to the college game, chipping away incrementally at the quality of the sport.

Could such a thing happen in football-crazed America? Perhaps . . . just look at what has happened to the sport that, just two generations ago, held absolute and unquestioned sway as the national pastime.

Go 'Dawgs!

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I disagree

Kyle,
Good post, but I must respectfully disagree. At the risk of making a blanket statement, I think sometimes our friends in many of the football crazed portions of this country fail to realize that not all high school football is played on Friday nights. Case in point my alma mater, which was and still is barred from playing home games and many away games on Friday nights to do an incredibly dumb Baltimore city ordinance. 90% of the time our games were played on Saturday's (we had one or two Thursday afternoon games,) which as you can expect put me in much more of a dilemma than any Friday night situation.

The point is simple; if you're playing on Friday night it probably means that you weren't going to be on TV on Saturday. You say that games on Friday night detract from the awareness of High School football players, but do you know what 95% of those players do Saturday morning? They watch Sportscenter, Gameday, etc., and if the game the night before was any good you can bet it'll be covered. Furthermore, we are not talking about moving a slate of five or six college games to Friday nights. I think the people at ESPN are intelligent enough to realize that they can never broadcast more than two college games on Friday night, with one of those coming on ESPN 360, which nobody gets anyway. High School players who have the chance to go on and play Division I football are going to be aware of what's going on whether or not there is a game on Friday night.

Baseball screwed up because there hasn't been a quintessential day to watch baseball in some time. I assume it's Saturday, but for some reason Saturday's in the spring/summer don't carry the same weight as Saturday's in the fall. No matter what happens with Friday night college games, the reality is that this is something etched within the American sports psyche and isn't going to be broken just because some lower tier Big East team beat some middle tier MAC team the night before on ESPNU. As far as baseball goes, I also think you underestimate the ability of a nine year old to stay up past his/her bedtime and watch the completion of a 7:05 start. ["But Dad it's the PLAYOFFS!"] Heck, they don't even go to school until 9 in the morning anyway.

Maybe it's because I came from different circumstances with regards to High School football, but I really don't think a Friday night college game causes much harm to High School football. If anything, I think the fans are more apt to go see their local High School team play and opt to tape/tivo the college game, which is more or less a win-win for everyone in the short run but will eventually push ESPN to cut back on broadcasting college games on Friday nights. In fact, I think we're seeing the beginning of expanded coverage of elite high school teams on Friday night, which arguably could kill the Friday night college game some time down the road.

-Adam

by AdamN on Jun 13, 2007 9:30 AM EDT reply actions

I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree here...

...if only because the friday night games are generally lackluster affairs that only team partisans, potential recruits, and CFB junkies (like those of us who blog about it) could care about.

If anything, I'd say more harm is being done to the college teams who schedule these games, since the point of being on TV for these programs (besides getting paid, of course) is for recruiting exposure. While AdamN makes the point that the game will more than likely be highlighted the next day on Sportscenter, a few quick clips doesn't compare with watching an entire game play out, so any exposure is basically negligible.

Plus, considering there is only one (or two) Friday night games, that's four markets tops that are having to choose between staying home/attending the college game and attending the local high school games for one week during the season. It's not like the entire country is abandoning high school football each week.

by Todd @ Dawg Sports on Jun 13, 2007 10:05 AM EDT reply actions

Rutgers-South Florida

Todd, I understand what you're saying but disagree in some circumstances. Look back on the Rutgers-South Florida game last season on Friday night. It vaulted Rutgers into the Top 25 and was all over Gameday the next day (they kept playing that dumb locker-room celebration). For South Florida it helped too, considering nobody before then had been talking about them as hovering in that Top 30 range. The Big East has been playing a lot (not sure the percentage) of these Friday night games and has capitalized on them. I think you can use these games effectively for exposure although most teams don't capitalize. I would also add that these game are best scheduled early in the season, as nobody wants to interfere with High School playoffs in November.

by AdamN on Jun 13, 2007 11:13 AM EDT reply actions

Personally

I would prefer to see ESPN cover some elite high school games on Friday night rather than college games.
And any school system that is playing a bulk of their games on Saturday rather than Friday night should be deported to Canada.
Finally, MLB does need to make their games more viewer friendly, especially for the playoffs (maybe TBS will get it right).

by fotodog on Jun 13, 2007 12:49 PM EDT reply actions

It seems that the

bulk of the Friday night teams are, well, from the Big East, a conference that needs some kind of hook - and weekday games have become their "thing". And, as stated above, a good number of high schools in the godless North East play their football games on Saturdays. My high school played on Friday night, but then, I grew up in State College, PA - they had no choice.

I can't imagine having to tailgate on a Friday night - I'd have to take the day off from work - but I guess that it would free up the rest of the weekend.

"Kids today" who are truly gifted athletes find their path - for football and basketball, high school is where you are "found." Baseball still relies heavily on club teams and non-academic venues to showcase their talent (hockey and ice skating would be other examples) -

by PSUgirl on Jun 13, 2007 3:18 PM EDT reply actions

I don't think you need to worry about HS football.

Parents and community members in Alabama and Texas will still be in the stands at high school games, since the quality of play will be equal to or better than whatever slop ESPN plans to broadcast on Friday nights.

This will cause a problem for the University of Pittsburgh, however, who currently have a hard enough time getting asses in the seats. They can't handle competition from high schools, so they'll probably be on the road...on Friday nights...and still, nobody will watch or care.

by Run Up The Score on Jun 13, 2007 4:06 PM EDT reply actions

It comes down to the number of games

I think the rise of football over baseball has less to do with individual nights and more to do with the length of the season and number of games played.

Currently, MLB teams play 162 games a season. I'm a huge Braves fan, but honestly, even I can't get up for 162 frickin' games. In much the same way that a casual NASCAR fan might kind of tune out the first 200-something laps and only focus on the last five, when things are really critical, I can see a lot of baseball fans (to some extent, myself included) maintaining only a passing interest in the first 70 or 80 games, paying a little more attention after the All-Star break, and then only REALLY getting geeked up if a pennant race gets hot over the final 20 or 30 games.

In a regular season of only 16 (NFL) or 12 (NCAA) games, though, that's not gonna happen. If your team is competitive, you literally might not be able to miss a single game, because each individual game could have some impact on whether your team has a title shot or not.

THAT's the difference here, I think. If the NCAA started scheduling a whole bunch of Friday-night games, fans would MAKE time for them because each one would be important. MLB fans haven't done that simply because it's a lot harder to justify rearranging your schedule and making a baseball game "appointment viewing" when it's just one game out of 162.

So I guess my point is I wouldn't worry about this development too much. Obviously I'd rather see my team play on Saturdays, but if some other teams want to break out of the pack and get some more specific media attention by playing on a Friday, I think any detrimental effects from that would be pretty negligible in the long run.

"Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'sir' without adding 'you're making a scene.' " -- Homer Simpson

by dougisthesoulmachine on Jun 13, 2007 4:34 PM EDT reply actions

It's logical but disappointing

Part of the myth of college football is that it is really about student athletes and amateur sport in the best sense. In reality, there's a constant tension between that myth and the reality of grubby commerce that helps keep teams on the field. In the grand scheme of things, once you have started down the slippery slope of Tuesday night games, or Thursday night games, what's to stop Friday night games? It's essentially discount pricing for less popular goods - but aesthetically, it feels wrong.

I don't have a feeling one way or the other about whether it could negatively affect high school football - since my high school was too small (~150 students) to field a football team, I have no experience as a fan of that level of the game. I suspect that it will not, inasmuch as there will always be a core of young men who will want to play... If anything, I would suggest that the long term risk to football is not young men watching rather than playing, that they would rather play something else.

Incidentally, there was an article the other day in the Washington Post about how little league is taking a real dent around here because it's too hard to get kids and parents to early games as a result of traffic. I'd imagine that having 8 year olds finishing their games at 8 or 9 pm of a Wednesday evening isn't helping the sport. I see a fair bit of baseball played in the park at the end of my block, but it's always organized with adult supervision, and frankly feels a bit like a result of the deliberate nostalgia that drives us to live in the neighborhood to begin with. The guy whose kid is named Satchel and dog is named Mookie is the asymptote of that behaviour.

by DC Trojan on Jun 13, 2007 5:20 PM EDT reply actions

My thanks go out to all of you . . .

. . . who commented, either here at Dawg Sports or over at Every Day Should Be Saturday.

I thoroughly enjoy Friday night football and I appreciate the extent to which it provides national television exposure to programs that otherwise might not get it. I particularly liked Fotodog's suggestion of focusing on an elite high school football game . . . which, to the Worldwide Leader's credit, ESPN does to some extent, working regular updates of a high school "showcase" game into its Friday night telecast.

As I tried to make clear by the way in which I hedged a bit with my choice of words (e.g., "I may have to revise that view somewhat"; "Friday night college football, though, may be unwise for the health of the sport"; "I wonder whether, two decades hence, we will look back . . ."; "The popularity of football at all levels of competition leads me to believe that Friday night college football will not prove ruinous to the health of the game at the high school level, but it might . . ."; "Could such a thing happen in football-crazed America? Perhaps . . ."), I am more concerned about this as a possibility than I am convinced of it as a certainty.

Walker Percy used to say that the goal of a novelist was to be a failed prophet. That is, he viewed it as his role (in such novels as, e.g., Lancelot and Love in the Ruins) to warn his fellow man about what was worrying him in the hope of averting a potential crisis. I now find myself tremendously reassured in the face of the persuasive cases made by the various commenters.

Nice job, folks; now I can sit in my living room and watch Friday night football (while still making it out to a high school game or two per season) with no moral qualms. I may even invite Beergut over to watch a little Friday night football with me . . . provided he promises not to get his mean on all over my couch.

Much obliged, everyone. You've done fine work today.

by T Kyle King on Jun 13, 2007 8:00 PM EDT reply actions

appreciate the shout out, T. Kyle

and my apologies for referring to you as "Paul" in my comments on EDSBS.
I mixed the two of you up as I was writing.

You ever seen the cinematic classic "Johnny Be Good" with Anthony Michael Hall?
Think of the opening scene, when the coach gives his pre-game speech before the state championship game, and asks someone to get a 'mean on'.
THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!

by Beergut on Jun 14, 2007 4:30 AM EDT reply actions