The sick joke on America that is Thursday Night Football

What does that even mean? Holiday weekends are preferred not because of the level of play but because of the attendance and attention.

 

I meant for the school. There's no risk playing that game on a short week or hurting attendance for a game that might not fill up the stadium anyway.

But your SEC powers don't want to give up a Saturday home date against a fellow conference team the way Pac-12 teams seem to be willing to.

By the way, has the Big Ten ever played a Thursday night game? I remember they raised hell even when the TV networks moved some of their games from noon Saturday to mid-afternoon or night kickoffs.

 

You have obviously mistaken this for the soccer thread.

 

And yet, people are watching:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/10/03/thursday-night-football-on-cbs-nfl-network-earns-metered-market-ratings-increase-of-96-percent-over-last-year/310392/

 

I believe there are now rules that require teams to give players four consecutive days off during the off-week.

 

Wisconsin opened their season on a Thursday night in 2011. Beyond that, I don't recall any. Of course, this is the conference that has clung to the Rose Bowl as the be-all, end-all so I'm not sure we want to include them in any discussion that involves progress.

 

For the sake of this discussion, openers and holiday weekends don't count.

 

Comparing NFL Net and CBS is pointless because of viewer habits and carriage. NFL Net is only in 60-some percent of households.

Last night's game was a 10.6. Sunday Night Football has been getting 13s regularly. Also, the Thursday night games have been scoring quite a bit lower in the 18-49 demo -- barely better than the week's top prime-time shows, which is not a good sign considering each of these eight games cost CBS about $35 million.

 

To follow up on that, my alma mater has a fancy new $61 million football operations building largely due to TV money. They play their sixth game of the year tomorrow; none of the games have been day games, with the earliest start being 5 p.m. PT. They've had one Thursday night and one Friday night game thus far. Plus next week's game at Stanford is a Friday night game. Homecoming game tomorrow is a 7:30 p.m. start. Back when I was at WAZZU, the school refused to have Homecoming start any later than 2 p.m., even if it meant giving up TV revenue.

 

The UCF / Houston game was also a good one with crazy ending. Heartbreaking for Houston.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iE11BGPTQQ

 

This is the part I was getting at:

Last night’s programming on CBS and NFL Network from 8:00-11:00 PM, ET averaged a primetime overnight HH rating/share of 9.9/17, +30% higher than last year’s overnight HH rating/share of 7.6/13 for CBS primetime programming on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013 (Big Bang Theory – 8:00 PM, THE MILLERS – 8:31 PM, THE CRAZY ONES – 9:01 PM, Two and a Half Men – 9:31 PM, Elementary- 10:01 PM).

CBS/NFL Network’s rating/share of 9.9/17 in primetime beat each of the broadcast networks: +29% higher than ABC (7.7/12), +175% higher than FOX (3.6/6) and +200% higher than NBC (3.3/5).