Gophers have at least 3 Friday night games

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Dano564

Dano564

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What's up with that?

10/30 at Maryland
11/13 at home vs Iowa
11/20 at home vs Purdue





That's a lot of anthracite this year!
 

From a TV watching perspective I've always liked the night games...too many Saturdays throughout the years where kid activities have caused me to miss a game. I have no ties to high school football so I'm in the minority and don't mind this.
 

Well

looks like I’m going to miss watching all those Friday games
 

tmvander said:
From a TV watching perspective I've always liked the night games...too many Saturdays throughout the years where kid activities have caused me to miss a game. I have no ties to high school football so I'm in the minority and don't mind this.
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As a high school coach, this is quite inconvenient
 

Pretty sure Coach sees this as a positive...especially if this starts looking like a magical season in spite of being in the covid alternative timeline.
 



With the revised and condensed schedules for Gophers and the HS season, I think there will be limited conflicts. I know the Gopher game on Oct 30th will be the same night as the majority of HS games that week. The Gopher game on Nov 13th is the final week of the HS regular season, and a number of HS games are being played on Wednesday and Thursday that week, so fewer conflicts with the Gophers. For the Gopher game on Nov 20th, that is the first week of Section HS FB playoffs, and most HS games will be played on Tuesday and Saturday.

There are no State FB playoffs in MN this year, so I guess the bottom line is, it could have been worse.
 

Especially this year, I see this as great exposure. While there may be some HS conflicts, there will be a lot of people wanting to watch football on a Friday night.
 

Being I'm watching from home, I have no problem with this. If this was a normal year, and we were attending in person, I'd be pretty pissed.

Having young children, I do appreciate knowing already we won't be playing Saturday night on Halloween.

Notice that even with no fans, the "blue bloods" (OSU, Mich, PSU) don't have to play Friday nights.
 



forever a gopher said:
Being I'm watching from home, I have no problem with this. If this was a normal year, and we were attending in person, I'd be pretty pissed.

Having young children, I do appreciate knowing already we won't be playing Saturday night on Halloween.

Notice that even with no fans, the "blue bloods" (OSU, Mich, PSU) don't have to play Friday nights.
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I'd call Wisconsin pretty close to a "premier" program and they open on a Friday night.

Also, I don't believe all the Friday night games are announced yet. I could be wrong, but pretty sure there will be more than 4 all year.

But hands down, the exposure on ESPN or FS1 on a Friday is MUCH better than a 10am game on ESPN2 or BTN. No arguing that.
 

It doesn't necessarily bother me, but I do find it odd that only 7 out of 14 B1G teams have a Friday night game, and that Minnesota has 3 of them -- so 37.5% of their regular season schedule. It's just very weird and inequitable.
 

WriterGoph said:
I'd call Wisconsin pretty close to a "premier" program and they open on a Friday night.

Also, I don't believe all the Friday night games are announced yet. I could be wrong, but pretty sure there will be more than 4 all year.

But hands down, the exposure on ESPN or FS1 on a Friday is MUCH better than a 10am game on ESPN2 or BTN. No arguing that.
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From a record standpoint, I would agree. But from a national perspective, they are clearly a rung or more below the OSU, Michigan, PSU grouping. I also don't think they have as much clout as those other programs to dictate when they play, like Delany allowed those programs to do.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
With the revised and condensed schedules for Gophers and the HS season, I think there will be limited conflicts. I know the Gopher game on Oct 30th will be the same night as the majority of HS games that week. The Gopher game on Nov 13th is the final week of the HS regular season, and a number of HS games are being played on Wednesday and Thursday that week, so fewer conflicts with the Gophers. For the Gopher game on Nov 20th, that is the first week of Section HS FB playoffs, and most HS games will be played on Tuesday and Saturday.

There are no State FB playoffs in MN this year, so I guess the bottom line is, it could have been worse.
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They haven’t set what the postseason will look like yet nor have they set the game dates as anything but Friday for the regular season in the metro
 



MGGopher said:
It doesn't necessarily bother me, but I do find it odd that only 7 out of 14 B1G teams have a Friday night game, and that Minnesota has 3 of them -- so 37.5% of their regular season schedule. It's just very weird and inequitable.
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Maybe it’s possible we volunteered because the Friday night conflicts bother us less during a pandemic.

mwybe we want to play 3 this year so we play less 2021-2025
 

forever a gopher said:
From a record standpoint, I would agree. But from a national perspective, they are clearly a rung or more below the OSU, Michigan, PSU grouping. I also don't think they have as much clout as those other programs to dictate when they play, like Delany allowed those programs to do.
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True, that's a fair point. We also are not at the level yet where we can call our shots like those three programs can.
 

More night games I would suppose. I honestly think it may be a ploy to get more national viewership on some of the "on the cusp" teams in a way that is less risky (i.e. we have the potential to have another historic season, so more night games may equal more national viewership during a timeslot that wouldn't otherwise get it. On the flip side, if we stumble and fail they don't lose viewership in a timeslot that may have otherwise had great viewership).
 

Taji34 said:
More night games I would suppose. I honestly think it may be a ploy to get more national viewership on some of the "on the cusp" teams in a way that is less risky (i.e. we have the potential to have another historic season, so more night games may equal more national viewership during a timeslot that wouldn't otherwise get it. On the flip side, if we stumble and fail they don't lose viewership in a timeslot that may have otherwise had great viewership).
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Very true. Let us remember that USC regularly played Friday night games during their best years with Leinart and Bush. It did not seem to hurt their brand.
 

From the U of MN:
Minnesota Kicks Off Against Michigan on ABC

The Big Ten Conference announced today that Minnesota will start its 2020 season at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24 against Michigan. The Gophers and Wolverines will square off nationally on ABC. The winner will claim the Little Brown Jug, which is one of the most iconic trophies in college football.

Dating back to last season, Minnesota will have played five of its six most recent games on network television. The exception being Minnesota’s Outback Bowl win against Auburn, which was broadcast on ESPN.

The Conference also announced that Minnesota will play three Friday games – one on the road and two at home – this year. Minnesota’s first road game of the season will now take place on Friday, Oct. 30 at Maryland. Minnesota will also host Iowa on Friday, Nov. 13 and Purdue on Friday, Nov. 20.

Minnesota is 6-0 under head coach P.J. Fleck in non-Saturday games. It is 1-0 on Friday (beat Indiana 38-31 at home in 2018), 2-0 on Wednesday (bowl wins against Auburn and Georgia Tech) and 3-0 on Thursday (season-opening home wins against Buffalo, New Mexico State and South Dakota State).

The Gophers are also 8-3 in night games under Fleck and have won their last six night games.

Minnesota is ranked No. 24 in the AP Poll, while Michigan is ranked No. 19. If both teams are ranked on Oct. 24, it will mark Minnesota’s fifth ranked opponent in its last six games. Minnesota ended last season with games against Penn State, Iowa, Northwestern, Wisconsin and Auburn. Every team was ranked in the AP Poll except Northwestern.

The Oct. 24 game will also be the first time that an AP Poll ranked-Minnesota team will open the season against another ranked opponent. The AP poll started in 1936.
 

The conference announced four other Friday games:

"Badgers will host the Illini in the first Big Ten game at 7 p.m. CT on Friday, Oct. 23.
  • Oct. 30: Minnesota-Maryland, 6:30 p.m.
  • Nov. 13: Iowa-Minnesota, 6 p.m.
  • Nov. 20: Purdue-Minnesota, TBD.
  • Nov. 27: Nebraska-Iowa, TBD.
www.baltimoresun.com

Week 1: Big Ten football schedule

The Big Ten has released details of its Week 1 schedule and announced five Friday games, starting with Illinois-Wisconsin.
www.baltimoresun.com www.baltimoresun.com
 

I really don't care whether it's Friday or Saturday. However...

The regular season is going later in the year than it normally does. It gets really cold in November and December in Minnesota when the sun goes down. Of all the teams in the Big Ten, it would make sense to have the Gophers play afternoon games, not night games.

Recruits are going to see a lot of giant parkas on the sidelines, and hear a lot of talk from the announcers about the weather, and see a lot of graphics on the screen showing the temperature in the Twin Cities. I'm not sure that's prime recruiting fodder.
 

Urbandale said:
I really don't care whether it's Friday or Saturday. However...

The regular season is going later in the year than it normally does. It gets really cold in November and December in Minnesota when the sun goes down. Of all the teams in the Big Ten, it would make sense to have the Gophers play afternoon games, not night games.

Recruits are going to see a lot of giant parkas on the sidelines, and hear a lot of talk from the announcers about the weather, and see a lot of graphics on the screen showing the temperature in the Twin Cities. I'm not sure that's prime recruiting fodder.
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Maybe. But honestly recruits where cold is a dealbreaker would end up transferring anyways.
We kind of need to own the cold. We can’t really do much to change it.

Unless we all just idle our cars until global warming kicks in
 

Urbandale said:
I really don't care whether it's Friday or Saturday. However...

The regular season is going later in the year than it normally does. It gets really cold in November and December in Minnesota when the sun goes down. Of all the teams in the Big Ten, it would make sense to have the Gophers play afternoon games, not night games.

Recruits are going to see a lot of giant parkas on the sidelines, and hear a lot of talk from the announcers about the weather, and see a lot of graphics on the screen showing the temperature in the Twin Cities. I'm not sure that's prime recruiting fodder.
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Beating Iowa on a Friday night and carrying Floyd around if it's cold out will speak louder to recruits than weather. IMO, what you are mentioning is a line of thinking we were plagued with during the Mason years ("we can never recruit well to Minnesota because..."). But if you look at our classes, we are landing more kids from warm climates (Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Texas) than we ever did before. Winning > temperature
 

GopherLady said:
Dating back to last season, Minnesota will have played five of its six most recent games on network television. The exception being Minnesota’s Outback Bowl win against Auburn, which was broadcast on ESPN.
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Imagine that. And in the era of most games being on cable. When I was a kid and we didn't have cable, they would be on TV once per year to be sacrificed to either Michigan or OSU.
 

Some guy said:
Maybe it’s possible we volunteered because the Friday night conflicts bother us less during a pandemic.

mwybe we want to play 3 this year so we play less 2021-2025
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That very well could be. None of us are privy to the details, so it's all speculation at this point. It does seem that Coyle and Fleck are viewed as "team players" by conference leadership, so I expect we'll see more than our fair share of Friday games each and every year. The fact that we don't see PSU, OSU, or Mich on this list even in a year with no fans makes me believe that even more.
 


I'm not worried about the announcers talking about how cold it can get. If the players can't handle cold then they won't be able to handle the NFL. Fleck doesn't want players who aren't tough.
 

highwayman said:
There's a newfangled thing called a VCR. It's got a tape and everything.
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For sure. Recorded sports are definitely equally as fun as live, especially with how easy it is to avoid information these days
 

MGGopher said:
That very well could be. None of us are privy to the details, so it's all speculation at this point. It does seem that Coyle and Fleck are viewed as "team players" by conference leadership, so I expect we'll see more than our fair share of Friday games each and every year. The fact that we don't see PSU, OSU, or Mich on this list even in a year with no fans makes me believe that even more.
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I do know they announced a few years ago that everyone would be playing some amount of Friday games in some time period in the new tv contract. Which is what led to me speculating more fridays this year leads to fewer fridays in future years
 

I like night games (but for the atmosphere which isn’t really in play here)

Don’t think it matters competitively.

Probably will see the Gophers in solo prime time on FOX for Iowa and maybe one or two of the others. That’s nice. Minnesota may have volunteered to get more games in prime time TV opposite reruns.

Weird that the Gophers would get 3 of the 5 Friday games.
 

Some guy said:
For sure. Recorded sports are definitely equally as fun as live, especially with how easy it is to avoid information these days
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Then watch the game live. You have a choice. I understand that 5% of fans have Friday night commitments. That's about the percentage that doesn't like Friday games and complain. They also complain about the weather, standing in line at concessions and the men's bathroom. And Joel Maturi and Jerry Kill.

There are going to be no fans at the games, so really, what difference does it make?
 
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