Friday night heist

Once upon a time in America, Friday nights in the fall were the sole domain of high school football.

That epoch is history.

Last Friday while making the trek to Mill Hall, Pennsylvania to broadcast a high school football game, SiriusXM was broadcasting the Army/Temple game that kicked off during rush hour at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia in what a broadcast executive would call a “programming filler.”

The college game has hijacked high school football in the pursuit of yet another revenue stream

54,100 seats were empty.

It was a college game played in front of a crowd you could fit into a high school stadium.

Some college games now are played on Friday that nobody requested, few attend and the only beneficiaries are broadcast and streaming networks and that supplement those hefty collegiate athletic budgets.

The college game has hijacked high school football in the pursuit of yet another revenue stream.

Something is very wrong with this picture and everyone knows it.

If this does not summarize how upside-down college football has become, what does?

The seed was firmly planted when the first night football game involved ironically two non-highschool teams. The date was on Wednesday, September 28, 1892, when Wyoming Seminary, a prep school took on Mansfield State Normal under a crude setup of electric lights in Mansfield, Pennsylvania.

Across much of our fruited plain and by the mid-20th century, Friday night high school football under the lights became an American institution. Friday night football became the heartbeat of towns as stadium lights flickered, bands played and the locals showed up. It was the one night of the week when kids were the stars and the town revolved around them.

Now college football wants it.

It is another crack in the foundation of the traditional rhythm of the football world. Friday was high school, Saturday was college, Sunday and Monday were the pros. Everyone knew their lane and respected it. This is a violation of the sport’s natural order. It is the college game cannibalizing the high school game where television wants a seven-day game buffet and every conference is more than willing to oblige.

College football is everywhere, all the time, and yet it still wants more

College football already dominates the Gregorian calendar. It owns Saturdays. It spills into Thursday nights. It even creeps into Sundays to open the season. It has bowl season, playoff season and the never-ending recruiting season. It is everywhere, all the time.

And still, it wants more.

But at what cost?

Penn State opened Northwestern’s new stadium on Friday and made fans choose between supporting their local high school team and watching their college team. That is not a choice any true fan of the game should have to make.

When a major college program jumps into Friday night, it siphons attention, crowds and revenue away from the very level of football that needs it most.

This is how traditions die. Not with melodramatic announcements, but with the slow, nonstop drip of exceptions until the traditional way is lost. Friday nights used to be sacred. Now they are just another time slot on a broadcast schedule.

High school football is the purest version of the game. It is where the game is learned, where towns build identity, where the sport still belongs to the people rather than the networks. There are no NIL deals, conference realignments, no billion-dollar broadcast contracts. Just kids playing for their hometowns under the lights the way it has been for generations.

It the passing of a shared tradition from one generation to the next.

Army, Temple, Northwestern and Penn State should not be playing on any Friday.

College football should respect the foundation that grew the game. Because once Friday nights are gone, they are not coming back. And the sport will be poorer for it.

Friday night belongs to the high school players.

It always has and should remain so.