I'm curious to hear about people's thoughts on games increasingly not being played on Saturday. Do you find this is good or bad for college football? Thursday night games seemed to be special at one point over the past decade or so, but now with games on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday during the week ... is this good or bad for college football? Will there ever be games 7 days a week like in college basketball?

The weekday college football games originated as a way of getting exposure for non-BCS teams. ESPN began airing Mountain West and WAC games on Thursdays years ago. It has evolved into games virtually every day of the week. I think it's a good thing because the schools you never saw on TV in the 90s (Boise State, Fresno State, Utah, etc) were finally getting air time. Now it seems like even the power conferences are following suit and getting their games on TV on Thursdays and Fridays. It's all about exposure, and if you want your football program to get some air time (particularly when you're a smaller school), you have no choice but to go on the air weekdays. Things are definitely slanted in favor of the big boys and the big six conferences that dominate the TV airwaves. Heck, Oct. 21 will mark Fresno State's first ever appearance on an ESPN primetime (East Coast) Saturday night appearance when the Bulldogs take on LSU. There have been countless Friday night ESPN appearances and even a Saturday ESPN2 game here and there for the Bulldogs but never a Saturday prime time ESPN game until this year. (And even still, it's because the opponent is LSU.)

It does create a hardship for fans though. I think it was last year... Fresno State had like 2 home Saturday games and the rest were weekday games (like a Thursday, Friday and even a horrible Tuesday night game). It's not easy to make a 5 p.m. game on a Tuesday but people will sacrifice if it means your school is on national TV. Personally I think the only reason the country knows how good Fresno State and Boise are is because of national TV. And that reminds me... those teams meet on ESPN on a Wednesday this year in Boise. Yes, Wednesday, November 1st. It's not ideal but you take what you can get when you're one of the little guys and you operate on a fraction of the football budget of the big boys.

[ September 08, 2006, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: TheOtherFSU ]

I think it's great - the more the merrier! I'll take college foot or basketball over the pros anyday and have never been bored by any college game.

I think it's great especially since it's being used to give exposure to schools that wouldn't normally get it on a national level. So long as they don't start showing the same Big/Pac 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, etc. I love it.

Still waiting for this trend to get Buffalo on National TV....


....oh wait, that whole "they suck" thing gets in the way I guess.

I do like the weekday games though

the more games the better

any publicity that schools can get is good

Agreed. The more games, the merrier.

You can't possibly watch EVERY game on a Saturday - so in my opinion this makes it possible to see more of them.

I like the Thursday games, it's like a nice way to let you know the weekend is very near.

I like Thursday games a lot, more football is always good!