They could play at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday for all I care, just so long as Iowa beats Knobraska. Better dead than red! Go Hawks!
Tradition? Since when is IOWA playing on Friday a tradition?
Anyone know what the Nebby-Co ratings are on that Friday?
On a personal note, I think it would suck. Thurs./Fri. of Thanksgiving week are for spending time with family. Football brings my dad, my brothers, and I together, but I've got lots of aunts, uncles, in-laws, cousins, etc. that don't really follow sports. I've never seen a minute of the Nebby-CO game because of this reason.
Michigan didn't start touching the banner until 1962. I wonder if people were saying "Since when is THAT a tradition?" back then too?
The point is that all traditions have to start somewhere, they don't just magically appear.
I would guess that the fact that it was Nebraska and COLORADO would have a significant impact on the ratings, for the same reason that I don't watch Kansas play Oklahoma on a Saturday: it's a lousy matchup.
Colorado had a lot of football success in the 90's and this was supposed to be the rivalry of the North for the Big 12 after their merge with the SWC. (Kinda sounds familiar in a terrible way actually.) But because CO ended up sucking (and Nebraska went downhill as well), the game lost it's luster, and, as I said, never enticed me to watch a minute because I had more important things to do on that day.
The question is, would you be more likely to watch a random game (or better yet a moderately interesting game) if it were on that Friday? For me personally, I'd be less likely to watch on that Friday, but that doesn't mean the avg. person would be. That's why I wanted to know the ratings.
Nebraska and Iowa fans are going to watch no matter when they have the game. But would more random college football fans watch on that Friday or that Saturday? I honestly don't know.
I'm not sure how the ratings work for that kind of thing. But being the only game in town is advantageous. During the 2:30 timeslot this past weekend, there were several games I really wanted to see, and I only end up following one closely, and maybe flip to the others from time to time. Does that count the same as someone watching that game closely?
You also increase the number of random fans by playing on a Friday because the game is on national TV rather than regional.