Many Not Happy Big 10 Is Cutting Into Friday High School Football

Friday night high school football has been a long tradition for Michigan but now the Big 10 plans on having games on Friday nights in 2024 and people are not happy about it.

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High School Football Games

As long as I can remember high school football has owned Friday nights.

For many small towns high school football and sports in general are the only form of local entertainment and many communities have been built around these programs.

Originally the National Football League only held games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday to allow high school football to have Fridays and college football to have Saturdays most of the year.

Then the NFL expanded the number of teams and games and then some Saturday games started happening which dipped into college game time slots.

Maybe the Big 10 figured since no one complained when the NFL cut into college football on Saturdays they thought no one would complain about college football cutting into high school Friday night football. Well, think again.

People Are Outraged The Big 10 Is Going to Have Games on Friday Nights In 2024

There's been a few college football games on Friday nights for years but they are usually never big network games that could pull from high school sports and never get massive broadcast television coverage, until 2024.

Fox Sports has announced there will be 9 Big 10 games on Friday nights, many of them being conference games and even one doubleheader.  This will be nationally televised on Fox and many people who support high school football are unhappy.

Many high school football supporters responded to a Facebook post from Awful Announcing commenting on how Fridays should be left to high school football and I agree. This seems more about greed than the preservation of high school football. Isn't high school football where colleges get their players?

Bill Shuler made a great point in his post above that said,

Putting games on the air when prospective recruits and their families aren't watching...bold strategy.

Some fans pointed out it was because the WWE Smackdown is leaving the network so Fox needed to fill a hole. Some college fans hope to gain some games from their favorite teams. For the most part, most of the people on this thread say leave Friday night football to high schools and I have to agree.