Friday Night Lights coming to B1G football?

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MaxyJR1 said:
This is great for MN. We can go in with with MEA Friday to host a home Big Ten Game every year. The following Friday only the Class 6A schools play and 1/2 of MN HS teams are done for the season.

That translates to hosting Illinois next year and Indiana in 2018. Maryland in 2019.

Yom Kippur plays a role potentially in 2017. Metro schools will play on Thursday if Jewish observance falls on Friday-Saturday. We could host Maryland on September 29th next year.


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I've seen this on Twitter a little, too. "MEA is perfect!" And it probably is. But there are going to be six games per year. Everybody has their own rules about when the'll play -- before Labor Day, only on the road, not at all. That leaves a lot of games to fill after Labor Day with teams who won't do it. Minnesota is the school that always bends over for this stuff.

I'm starting to come around on this idea. Personally, I would love going to a Friday night game and, in the end, maybe it gives us a little more exposure. But Minnesota's wishes on when or where we want to play are the LAST things the Big Ten muckety-mucks will care about.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Here is the nail on the head. The Big Ten wants to eliminate the ESPNU and ESPNNews games from the schedule.
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Then eliminate them. There is no reason for any Big Ten home game to be on any network other than ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, or BTN.
 

FireDaveLee said:
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People say it's wrong to french kiss your sister, but you can do it and nothing bad happens. Except that now you're a guy who french kisses his sister.

Let's not be that guy.
 

For a team that can't sell out games, I don't understand the opposition to some non traditional games.

We have 7 home games a year and 6 of them fall on Saturdays. People continually bitch about how there is so much to do in Minnesota, on weekends, and that is part of why we can't sell out. The league comes up with an idea for Friday games and people are beside themselves.

Michigan, tOSU, PSU all have legit gripes to not "host" a Friday game. 100,000 people coming in on Friday can cause issues. IU, MN, NW, have 50,000 max to accommodate. Labor Day Friday and MEA Friday are the only Friday games I could attend and I would if the Gophers played on those nights.

The league said 6 of 105 games would be played on Fridays. MSU already plays one. That leaves 5 games. MN could play MEA Friday, that leaves 4. Sept/Oct consists of 9 weeks of the season. Only six of those weeks will have a Friday game.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
For a team that can't sell out games, I don't understand the opposition to some non traditional games.

We have 7 home games a year and 6 of them fall on Saturdays. People continually bitch about how there is so much to do in Minnesota, on weekends, and that is part of why we can't sell out. The league comes up with an idea for Friday games and people are beside themselves.

Michigan, tOSU, PSU all have legit gripes to not "host" a Friday game. 100,000 people coming in on Friday can cause issues. IU, MN, NW, have 50,000 max to accommodate. Labor Day Friday and MEA Friday are the only Friday games I could attend and I would if the Gophers played on those nights.

The league said 6 of 105 games would be played on Fridays. MSU already plays one. That leaves 5 games. MN could play MEA Friday, that leaves 4. Sept/Oct consists of 9 weeks of the season. Only six of those weeks will have a Friday game.
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Sister kisser.
 


MaxyJR1 said:
For a team that can't sell out games, I don't understand the opposition to some non traditional games.
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I think you'd find that Fridays would be harder to sell tickets for generally ... so if you have attendance issues that might make them worse.

There is an argument about "exposure" for teams folks might not otherwise see, but I'm not sure that really amounts to much. If they win they'll naturally get more exposure no matter when they play, a Friday night game where they lose, not helping. I don't think the "exposure" thing is a thing for individual team benefit as far as a random Friday goes.
 

I don't know about anyone else, but here is the situation I am in with my friends/family. We live outstate. It takes three hours one way to get from home to the tailgate lot. On Saturday we can leave early AM- tailgate- game- tailgate- head home. We don't need to worry about work, how early/late we are traveling, or anything else.

Then we started playing Thursday games. Sure, fine, whatever. Some of us can take work off at noon, some cannot or would not. No biggie, it's one game out of seven. Now this is also happening Fridays? So two of the seven homes games are played on a weekday? That's something that many people cannot swing. Hope the people who works weekends can pick up the slack and attend the weekday games I guess...
 

Saw an article that said the 6 games for next year could be announced in the next 7-10 days. We'll see what they are. I imagine that some with be some of the Pac 12/ Big Ten Non-Conference games and some non power Big Ten Conference games. Pac 12 already plays Friday games.

Minnesota at Oregon St.
Washington at Rutgers
 

fridays are high school, saturdays are college, and sundays are pro.

if we can get quadruple the exposure on national tv and get another night game though im for it.
 



Gopherocious said:
I don't know about anyone else, but here is the situation I am in with my friends/family. We live outstate. It takes three hours one way to get from home to the tailgate lot. On Saturday we can leave early AM- tailgate- game- tailgate- head home. We don't need to worry about work, how early/late we are traveling, or anything else.

Then we started playing Thursday games. Sure, fine, whatever. Some of us can take work off at noon, some cannot or would not. No biggie, it's one game out of seven. Now this is also happening Fridays? So two of the seven homes games are played on a weekday? That's something that many people cannot swing. Hope the people who works weekends can pick up the slack and attend the weekday games I guess...
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Plenty of High School parents and fans drive every Friday night about 2 hours to be at a 7pm football game. Some work nights and don't get to see their kid play. If you want to be at a game and have the means, you find a way. The U of M is a commuter school. A student or faculty might take advantage of sticking around for one game every 2-3 years. That's based on your team actually being one of the 6 games chosen and it's a home game.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
There is an argument about "exposure" for teams folks might not otherwise see, but I'm not sure that really amounts to much. If they win they'll naturally get more exposure no matter when they play, a Friday night game where they lose, not helping. I don't think the "exposure" thing is a thing for individual team benefit as far as a random Friday goes.
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I tend to agree with this. Exposure helps if your team is doing well, but if your team does well, you'd be likely to get the better timeslots on Saturday (which are more valuable than Friday night on an apples-to-apples basis).

As far as I see it, the new agreement:

A) Gives more exposure to teams that non-helmet teams by making them play on Friday night
B) Allows helmet teams to opt out of or severly modify that agreement

And as a result:

C) Non-helmet teams get more eyeballs than they do today because they're on a major channel, albeit on a Friday night
D) Helmet teams get more eyeballs than they do today because they're less likely to be on a minor channel on a Saturday
E) Helmet teams still far outpace non-helmet teams in viewers (potentially even more than they do today)
F) Conference viewership in total goes up
G) Non-helmet teams lose a opportunity for recruiting compared to helmet teams
H) Non-helmet teams have more potential for negative ticket sales impact than helmet teams due to realities of Friday vs Saturday scheduling

Also, it's looking like this will be an every-other-year thing.

Right now there are 9 teams that haven't outright refused to do this past Labor Day: Nebraska, Ohio State, Northwestern, Illinois, Rutgers, Maryland, Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue. If the plan is to have six games each year, two on Labor Day weekend and four after that, it means each of the above teams will likely be hosting a Friday game every other year on a Friday during September or October, after Labor Day.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Plenty of High School parents and fans drive every Friday night about 2 hours to be at a 7pm football game. Some work nights and don't get to see their kid play. If you want to be at a game and have the means, you find a way. The U of M is a commuter school. A student or faculty might take advantage of sticking around for one game every 2-3 years. That's based on your team actually being one of the 6 games chosen and it's a home game.
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Please explain how the U is a commuter school. Perhaps 15-20+ years ago. Over 90% (source: U of M website) live on campus. And I would be willing to be over 80+% of all students live within 2 miles of campus.

Our attendance issue isn't about people being in proximity (think how many fans go to Badger games who don't live in Madison), it is about a) lack of winning and b) poor game day culture. Winning fixes all.
 




GoldenAle said:
Please explain how the U is a commuter school. Perhaps 15-20+ years ago. Over 90% (source: U of M website) live on campus. And I would be willing to be over 80+% of all students live within 2 miles of campus.

Our attendance issue isn't about people being in proximity (think how many fans go to Badger games who don't live in Madison), it is about a) lack of winning and b) poor game day culture. Winning fixes all.
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90% of first year students.

only 23% of total students live on campus.
 

Coach Tracy Claeys sour on Big Ten's plan to add Friday night games

The games, which will be revealed this week, will include three nonconference games in September and three conference games in October. Gophers officials said they weren’t sure if they’ll be selected for one of the Friday games.

“I’m not a fan obviously of doing that,” Claeys said. “I think that Friday night should be for high school football games. I believe that, and high school football is so important — especially to all the smaller communities.

“And being in a city and an atmosphere with a lot of teams in this area, I hope ours is on the road quite frankly, if we play on Friday night.”

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany told the Chicago Tribune that he’s reluctant to play Friday night Big Ten games in the larger stadiums because of traffic concerns. Michigan said no to Friday games, home or road, and Penn State said no to Friday home games.
 

Gopher07 said:
I tend to agree with this. Exposure helps if your team is doing well, but if your team does well, you'd be likely to get the better timeslots on Saturday (which are more valuable than Friday night on an apples-to-apples basis).

As far as I see it, the new agreement:

A) Gives more exposure to teams that non-helmet teams by making them play on Friday night
B) Allows helmet teams to opt out of or severly modify that agreement

And as a result:

C) Non-helmet teams get more eyeballs than they do today because they're on a major channel, albeit on a Friday night
D) Helmet teams get more eyeballs than they do today because they're less likely to be on a minor channel on a Saturday
E) Helmet teams still far outpace non-helmet teams in viewers (potentially even more than they do today)
F) Conference viewership in total goes up
G) Non-helmet teams lose a opportunity for recruiting compared to helmet teams
H) Non-helmet teams have more potential for negative ticket sales impact than helmet teams due to realities of Friday vs Saturday scheduling

Also, it's looking like this will be an every-other-year thing.

Right now there are 9 teams that haven't outright refused to do this past Labor Day: Nebraska, Ohio State, Northwestern, Illinois, Rutgers, Maryland, Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue. If the plan is to have six games each year, two on Labor Day weekend and four after that, it means each of the above teams will likely be hosting a Friday game every other year on a Friday during September or October, after Labor Day.
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Did we refuse?
 

Iceland12 said:
“And being in a city and an atmosphere with a lot of teams in this area, I hope ours is on the road quite frankly, if we play on Friday night.”
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Coyle should stand by his coach and request flat out that we don't play home Friday games. Would love to see the double standard at work when the B1G tells him to take a flying leap.
 



I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of weeknight college football. I don't like the Thursday opener. I certainly won't like a second game on a Friday.

Think about this: All the lots that open at 2:30 on the Thursday opener - when will they open when school is in session??? 4:30?

I currently take a half day the opening Thursday then take the Friday after off. Even then it is just a cluster to get to and from the game. And no opportunity to tailgate. Doing it a second time - no thanks.

That may be the straw that breaks my back and causes me to drop my season tickets. I am already on the fence, this is just another stab at the season ticket holders.

Of course, I could be over-reacting. They'll probably play this game in US Bank Stadium so as to avoid campus...
 

Traffic concerns? What a bunch of BS. We play in the largest home city by far in the Big Ten. Delany should at least try being honest.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Traffic concerns? What a bunch of BS. We play in the largest home city by far in the Big Ten. Delany should at least try being honest.
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I know you're a stickler for truth :) Columbus is by far larger than Minneapolis and St. Paul, by population.
 

Gopher07 said:
I know you're a stickler for truth :) Columbus is by far larger than Minneapolis and St. Paul, by population.
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My mistake - you are correct and thank you for pointing it out. The point still stands though - I bet that Friday night traffic in Happy Valley is just devastating.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Traffic concerns? What a bunch of BS. We play in the largest home city by far in the Big Ten. Delany should at least try being honest.
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Yes, we're built for the traffic. We're a major metropolitan area with mass transit. We can handle the state fair, Vikings, Gophers, and Twins all playing on same night. We've proven it.

State College has infrastructure for 45,000. Bringing over 100,000 in on a weekday could cause issues.

It's not the #1-5 reason the helmet schools won't play on Friday, however.




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Gopher07 said:
I know you're a stickler for truth :) Columbus is by far larger than Minneapolis and St. Paul, by population.
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But traffic is far more dependent on total metro population rather than just a singular city and based on that the Twin Cities is bigger by ~1 million. :)
 

GoldenAle said:
23% meaning dorms? Because more than 23% live in houses/apartment buildings adjacent to campus.
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Right, 23% meaning dorms+university owned apartments. As you say, there are a bunch more that live close by, in Como and Prospect Park and Marcy Holmes. But I don't think I've seen that number anywhere.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
But traffic is far more dependent on total metro population rather than just a singular city and based on that the Twin Cities is bigger by ~1 million. :)
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If we're going by metro, then Northwestern and Maryland and Rutgers have us beat handily.
 


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Go Gophers!!
 

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