College Football is becoming more popular, and like with the NFL, television outlets are taking advantage of the increase in interest of the sport.
According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, Fox Sports will air a weekly Friday night college football game for the 2024 season.
This move shouldn’t come as much of a surprise with Fox Sports continually trying to spotlight featured college football games at times that differ from the usual Saturday night primetime slot. Fox started by putting its premiere game of the week at noon and calling it “Big Noon Kickoff” to combat CBS dominating the mid-day slot and ESPN/ABC having the primetime monopoly.
Fox has aired Friday night games before, usually on FS1, but we can now expect these games to feature one of the best matchups of the weekend instead of a game between a couple average teams or a great team facing off with a lesser opponent.
The Friday night game will likely feature Big Ten teams, although Marchand notes that the Big 12 and Mountain West conferences will also be involved, with Fox sharing the rights to televise the conference along with CBS and NBC. With the Big Ten expanding to 18 teams in 2024, the conference will have 18 games featuring one of its teams in the out of conference schedule and nine matchups when conference play starts.
The increase in teams means more games will be competing for airtime, so adding a second primetime slot, this time on Friday, makes it easier for college football fans to see more nationally televised games and for teams to receive the exposure they strive for.
It will be interesting to see if some teams refuse to host a Friday night game. For big-time college football programs like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, taking away a full Saturday of tailgating from their loyal fanbases may not be something they’re that fond of. Moreover, home games are one of the best recruiting tools for these premiere programs. If the game is on a Friday, high school recruits won’t be able to attend the game because the vast majority of high schools also play their games on Friday nights.
With only 7-8 home games a year, losing one of the opportunities to host recruits will be something that doesn’t sit well with the majority of Big Ten and Big 12 teams.
Regardless, this move now means football fans will see either a college or NFL game every night of the week from Thursday through Monday during the Fall.