By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.8, November 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0908/bbfridayfight.htm
High school coaches upset by the addition this fall of televised Friday night college football games won an early victory amid continued efforts to reduce the number of these telecasts. Football coaches in northwestern Ohio, with the help of their statewide association and the Ohio High School Athletic Association, wrote letters to the University of Toledo protesting its scheduling of its home opener with the University of Minnesota for Friday, Aug. 31. Eventually, Toledo rescheduled the game to Thursday, Aug. 30. Not only did the Rockets convincingly win, they also regained goodwill throughout Ohio and southeastern Michigan.
"It was a pretty good public relations move on their part," says Steve Gilbert, Head Coach at Tiffen-Columbian High School and President of the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association. "I think they came to the conclusion that Friday nights are high school nights."
There were many reasons for the protest, according to Gilbert. First, many coaches in the region like to watch Toledo games themselves. More than that, though, "We felt that somebody who is supposed to be on our side was taking our audience away," Gilbert says. "Everybody knows high school football funds a big part of every school's athletic department. The crowd and gate receipts on Friday nights are very important, and losing people to a college game makes it tough."
The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), meanwhile, has launched a "Save Our Friday Nights" Web site in response to the collegiate telecasts. "Through our Web site (www.mhsaa.com), we encourage people to contact universities and college conference commissioners. All those addresses have been up on our Web site since the end of May," says MHSAA Communications Director John Johnson. "I think at this point, we're more or less in a vigilance stance. We think we've been heard and now we'll see how long the memories are at the college level, and in another year, when the television contracts go out, whether people remember what happened here in the summer of 2001."
Southern coaches are also upset. After high schools in and around Greenville, N.C., protested to East Carolina University, it asked ESPN to change its day-after-Thanksgiving home game with the University of Southern Mississippi to an afternoon start. ESPN, which entered into a contract with Conference USA for a series of non-Saturday games in 2001, declined, but East Carolina officials did pledge to avoid scheduling televised Friday-night games in future seasons.
Area high schools are concerned about ECU's game that night because the second round of the state high school football playoffs is scheduled for that Friday night, says Charlie Adams, Executive Director of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA). "Our concern is that if it turns cold on Thursday and rains on Friday, the marginal fan will stay home to watch TV," Adams says. "And fans who are used to going to the high school game on Friday night and the East Carolina game on Saturday will have to make a choice between the two. We're very disturbed by that."
Adams says the NCHSAA asked all members to write East Carolina in protest, and some have taken the fight further. "Many of our football coaches have agreed that if the colleges are going to play on Friday night, then they're not welcome to come on their campuses and recruit their kids," Adams says. "We've also had many of them say that they might not make personal financial contributions to the colleges, and the money will now go to the high schools.
"I think these coaches are giving East Carolina the benefit of the doubt for now," Adams continues, "but if they were to come back and play [on Friday night] next year, I think the pressures that would be brought on them by our high school football coaches would be unbelievable. They're not very happy about this."