ARLINGTON — Adding more weeknight games is one of the latest changes proposed by Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark. He discussed the idea at Big 12 media days.
The Big 12 played two conference games on weeknights last year (Baylor-West Virginia and Oklahoma-Iowa St.), with both on Thursdays in October. However, the conference is looking to expand on that by adding more games on Fridays.
The proposal was made with TV ratings in mind, attempting to take advantage of decreased competition on those days.
“When you think about the tonnage of college football on air on a Saturday, it provides a lot of opportunity for us to kind of build our profile on a Friday night,” Yormark said.
For the schools involved, weeknight games can create challenges, but also opportunities. Many teams like to avoid short weeks leading up to games, but the exposure can also pay dividends when there are fewer games to compete with.
““I’m a fan of the midweek games if we can make it work,” West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said. “We played three midweek games last year. Go back and look at the TV ratings on all three of those games. Extremely high. What happens when you play a midweek game is you’re only competing maybe against one other team.”
The Big 12 is scheduled to play six weeknight games in conference play this season, four on Fridays and two on Thursdays.
Conference newcomers Cincinnati and BYU meet in the first game Sept. 29. And there will be two Black Friday games in the final week of the regular season – TCU at Oklahoma and Texas Tech at Texas.
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