Come next year, and for better or worse, Friday Night Lights won’t be limited to high school football in the Midwest.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith confirmed to the Columbus Dispatch that, beginning in 2017, a handful of Big Ten games will be moved to Friday night in primetime. The six yet-to-be-determined games will be split equally between FOX or the ESPN/ABC family.
Additionally, there will be 12 Saturday night games. The 18 total primetime games slated for broadcast next year on those networks would triple the number in 2016.
“We are supportive of it,” Smith said of Friday Night Lights. “We battles for a long time to try to be respectful obviously for high school football. But the reality is what we need to do for our television partners and what we need to do for our revenue stream, we needed to consider some different options.”
There will be no Friday night games in the month of November, Mark Rudner, the conference’s senior associate commissioner for television administration, told the Dispatch.
“We realized the impact it is going to have, we have always had a good relationship with the high school athletic associations,” Rudner told the paper, adding that commissioner Jim Delany spoke to the members of the high school athletic associations in each state impacted by the decision.
“It was important for us to keep them in the loop,” said Rudner.
Not so coincidentally, the league’s new television deals with both FOX and ESPN kick in beginning with the 2017 season.
One team not thrilled? Michigan, which Delany confirmed to the Chicago Tribune is “flat-out saying no to Friday night games.” The Wolverines prefer the “consistency of presentation” Saturday games afford them and their fans, the commish explained.