Earlier this week, the Mountain West Conference, the Western Athletic Conference and Conference USA announced that they had scheduled six games on Fridays nights for the 2001 season. Meanwhile, the Southern Conference also is looking into some potential Friday night games, but not until the 2002 season. Not surprisingly, many people are upset that the colleges are treading on what is seen as high school football's holy ground. Those people may as well get over it. As long as athletics departments need revenue to operate the kind of programs that will please their fans, they'll be looking for ways to make extra money.
Television is certainly a big resource for that.
That is why for several years now many colleges have moved games to Thursdays, another night when high school games are played. The last time I checked, Thursday night college games have had no noticeable negative affect on high school attendance. It's very unlikely that a Friday night college football telecast is going to have much of an impact on high school games, either. Let's face it, the bulk of the crowd at most high school games are made up of those who are family and friends of the players and of the band members. Not many of them are going to stay home and watch Louisville play Memphis on a Friday night.