The Big Ten is expanding to Friday nights in 2017, but two of its members aren’t thrilled about the idea.
The conference will have six Friday night games next season split among ESPN and Fox. The Friday night matchups will be unveiled this week, per the Chicago Tribune.
“All things considered,” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said via the Tribune, “we thought it was worthwhile to dip our toe in the water.”
The schools opposed to the idea: Michigan and Penn State.
Penn State has informed the Big Ten that we will not host football games on a Friday night. pic.twitter.com/6SH1tcvrw4
— Penn State Athletics (@GoPSUsports) November 2, 2016
Michigan’s reasoning, according to the Tribune report, was a loss of “consistency of presentation” if games aren’t played on Saturday.
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No team will be asked to play more than two Friday night games, and with the conference being at 14 teams, not everyone would be playing a game on Friday anyway. A max of 12 Big Ten teams would be chosen to play on Fridays and that assumes the league would only have conference games on Friday nights. It’s not.
Delany said there will be three conference games and three non-league games in September and October. No team will play more than twice and Michigan has reportedly said it doesn’t want to play on Fridays.
When Delany became commissioner in 1989, he said, the league had 16 televised football games. Now that number is 95, and he said the result is that the Saturday TV windows “become cannibalized.”
The Friday games are a chance for Big Ten teams who may typically play early in the day on Saturdays or on the Big Ten Network to get more exposure. Purdue, this may mean you. You may not watch the Boilermakers when there are numerous other games on, but if it’s a choice between the Big Ten and one or two other games, the odds of choosing the Big Ten are a little bigger.
All other Power Five conferences have started playing games late in the week – Iowa State hosts Oklahoma on Thursday while Colorado plays UCLA.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
