Some Thoughts on Big Ten Football Fridays

First, you need to read Teddy Greenstein's report, which has statements from a handful of schools regarding their willingness to play on Fridays.  Wisconsin has also revealed its desire to only host on the Friday before Labor Day, and not every time.  Michigan St. has hosted their Labor Day weekend opener on Friday nights four times since 2011 and Illinois's opener vs. Kent St. in 2015 was originally a Friday night games before being moved to the next day due to poor weather.

As we know, September and October are the desired months, which does make me wonder if Nebraska vs. Iowa, played on the Friday after Thanksgiving the past several years and scheduled for Black Friday again in 2017, is part of the six games in the report though it has not been a night game.  That might alleviate some of the angst over the report.

Ohio St. at Indiana was scheduled as the season opener for both schools on Saturday 9/2 and might be worth a move, as it falls in line with AD Gene Smith comment of being amenable to Friday night road games when class is not in session (actually class is in session, they'll be willing to host only when on break during fall semester).  Michigan St. is actually off that week and won't open their season until the following Saturday.  Two games on Friday 9/1/17 will air on BTN and another on (nope, no BTN) FS1 or ESPN.  Remember that ESPN has a few neutral site games that they air plus US Open tennis on ESPN2 on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, so their space is a bit limited.

Won't bother to guess the network, but I get the feeling this request could be more in line with the needs of FS1, though the games in October could be for BTN as FS1's schedule could be fluid due to the needs of the MLB postseason.  FS1 still has a lot of commitments to the Pac-12 and Big 12, though the requirements for FS1 games from the Big 12 are a lot lower than they are for the Pac-12.  FOX also wants to keep UFC after the current rights deal expires and FS1 airs a lot of UFC programming on Saturday nights through 2018.  FS1 also has MLB on Saturdays through September, which also takes up valuable programming space.

Why isn't November in scope?  Besides high school football playoffs in most states, heading back to FS1, they also have NASCAR Truck Series races three Friday nights in November, plus one Friday in September.  ESPN is also limited due to the start of NBA play plus college basketball.

Another quirk of sorts:  There's less non-conference games to choose from with the conference going to a nine game conference schedule starting in 2016 and generally, less weeks to choose them from.

I'll take a terrible stab at the six games, assuming that Nebraska vs. Iowa isn't part of this.

9/1: Ohio St. at Indiana
9/1: Buffalo at Minnesota (this one, per FBSchedules.com, is already scheduled for Thursday 8/31)
9/8: Western Kentucky at Illinois
9/8: Towson at Maryland
10/6: Penn St. at Northwestern
10/21: Purdue at Rutgers