Friday night lights have traditionally been the realm high school varsity football in Michigan and around the nation. Starting in 2017, the Big Ten Conference in its infinite wisdom will play Friday night games.
This has prompted the MHSAA (Michigan High School Athletic Association) Executive Director John “Jack” Roberts to respond to both Jim Delany (Big Ten Conference Commissioner) and Mark Hollis (Michigan State athletic director) before the decision was announced. Both Michigan and Michigan State have expressed low tolerance to the decision, knowing this would have an adverse effect on high school football.
Roberts’ statements after the decision reached by the Big Ten to schedule Friday night games:
“We are saddened by this decision. We had hoped that the Big Ten Conference would stay above this. We think this cheapens the Big Ten brand. Fans won’t like this. Recruits won’t like this. And high school football coaches won’t like this.
“We are grateful that Michigan State University and the University of Michigan are trying to minimize the effects of this decision by the Big Ten. But overall, this is just the latest step by major college athletics in the pursuit of cash that is just crushing high school sports.”
My personal opinion and I hope this is yours also if you love high school football; this is an unwanted and unneeded encroachment on a night that traditionally is reserved for high school football. As Roberts noted “Everyone knows that football is struggling right now. It’s getting a lot of bad publicity. Participation is declining. And now this; there couldn’t be worse timing.”
High schools have a hard enough time to meet budgets, provide learning environments that are safe and clean, with excellent teaching and support staff, and providing students with a quality education. Sports programs are of secondary focus, but an important part of the learning and maturing process for high school participants. This decision by the Big Ten is another blow to programs already experiencing poor attendance by spectators.
Another diversion from high school football is another “nail in the coffin” for programs that cannot help cover expenses by spectator attendance. A number of very successful programs help defray much of the costs by healthy gate ticket sales. This could, and most undoubtedly will, affect high school football programs in the coming years.
It is unfortunate that the Big Ten felt compelled to have a Friday night game. But such is the way of college football – a money making machine of vast proportions. And the Big Ten, like their counterparts in the different conferences within the NCAA, wants its share of the pie.
The essence of competition in the sport of football is in its purest form at the high school level. Once it gets beyond that to the college level, the money kicks in to form a demented and distorted pursuit for more and more cash. The NCAA uses those college teams as pawns for gaining huge sums of money, second only to the NFL. The college ranks are essentially the farm teams of the professional ranks. Once a player gets to the pro level, they truly are “meat on the hoof” disposable players – well paid, over-muscled, generally huge people to collide with each other. If they get hurt and can’t play any more, there’s more where they came from, just reload.
I love high school football, always have, as I participated on a local high school team and watch it up close and personal. I hope this decision doesn’t have an effect on high school football, but I agree with Jack Roberts, this is not a good thing.
The rotting of America from within continues…
Once “viewership” suffers, they will revert back to Saturdays. Some of the smaller colleges have started to schedule Friday games, simply because they could not compete with Major Colleges on Saturday TV. Whereas Major Colleges have a tight grasp of Saturday TV. I think they will realize that the additional trouble to set up for Friday games, with no boost to viewership, will be a burden they will soon regret and drop the idea.
Not good, High Schools need the revenues from football and communities need the unity.
And there is another practical side in it makes it also harder for college coaches to see highs school athletes in person. While visits from B1G head coaches are extremely rare those assistants who beat the bushes for talent won’t see the athletes.
Michigan State said they would only consider playing on the friday before Labor Day. And while that is a partial help there are still a lot of HS games that night, even though most are played on Thursday of that weekend.