Friday Night Lights are coming to the Big Ten, but nobody is going to want to watch.
On Wednesday, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany told the Chicago Tribune that the conference will broadcast six Friday Night games in September/October beginning in 2017, a big part of the conference's new TV deal with ESPN and Fox.
At first thought, it sounds like it could work. There are already some Friday night college football games, but it's either #MACtion or some Pac 12 matchups that start too late and don't help their desire to eradicate "East Coast bias" — a.k.a. low ratings. A Big Ten game might draw some East Coast eyeballs and give the Big Ten some undivided national attention (not that it needs any more with the success of its top teams this season). Plus, a rivalry game on national TV on Friday night would turn the football stadium into a giant party.
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But there's a catch, of course. Michigan has flat-out refused, and Delany said he'd be hesitant to ask schools with large stadiums like Ohio State and Penn State. In other words, the three highest-profile Big Ten teams are out. There goes any interest in those games.
Instead, viewers will get matchups like Purdue-Rutgers or Illinois-Indiana. The Big Ten has to already regret adding Rutgers to the conference, and thrusting the Scarlet Knights football team into the national spotlight will just make that decision look even worse. And if you're a student at a Big Ten school, do you really want to give up your Friday night to watch an awful football game?
The deal also outlines that three of the six games will be non-conference games, so we'll see even more of the Furman-Michigan State matchups that we "saw" this year (did anybody really tune into Big Ten Network for that game?). Imagine that on a national telecast on Fox or ESPN on Friday night. We don't need those games on national TV to remind us how awful those games are to watch — there already has been plenty of criticism of Power 5 schools padding their non-conference schedules with SoCon or MAC teams.
So it comes down to this: ESPN and Fox are likely banking on these games pulling in more viewers than whatever they show in those time slots. But it won't matter when the quality of football on our screens is about the same as their regular Friday primetime programming. The only positive that can come from this idea is that those low-tier Big Ten games won't take up their precious Saturday airspace.
The deal can't make much sense for the Big Ten Network, either. At least half of the conference games are on national TV every week, leaving three or four games for Big Ten Network to spread out over their Saturday schedule. How will the network replace a three-hour time slot when one of those games inevitably moves to Friday night on ESPN or Fox?
This just isn't a good idea for anybody involved. Between the NFL and college, fans probably don't want their Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays booked with football, and adding a fifth day is just overkill, and ratings and attendance figures will reflect this.
Nice try, guys.
