While I agree that Friday nights are for HS football(at least in middle America), 6 games will not have a huge impact. The question is will 6 this year become 12 next year and so on.

I do not really mind it. I do not go to local high school games as my daughter is no longer in school and I do not live where I grew up. I used to go but I haven't been to a high school game since 2005. I feel for the players who won't get to see the game.

It doesn't always happen, but I agree with you on this one. As a kid of around 11-15, Friday was definitely HS Football, Saturday was Buckeyes, and Sunday was Bengals. Always, every week in the fall. And it was a social event.

I'm not a fan of Friday night games, especially on the part of the B1G.

Even high schools are spreading out their schedules for TV exposure and, maybe, a few extra dollars. Locally, Ch. 53 has a weekly Thursday night HS game. ESPN shows live HS games anytime from Thursday through Sundays.

As for B10, with seven to 14 games each week they've realized that a Saturday-only schedule makes it almost impossible to keep all their TV outlets happy because they have games competing with one another. Even during conference season they'll usually have three noon games. SEC is finding the same thing. ACC and the other "P" conferences have scheduled Thursday or Friday games for years just for the TV exposure.

I don't mind the weekday games, it's just the ubiquity that's ruined the excitement.

Allow me to use this subject to steer the conversation towards some of my pet peeves and beating of the horse opinions!

The Thursday night game used to feel like you were getting away with something. You were getting an extra college football game you'd never get to see otherwise. Like an early start to the weekend. A Thirsty Thursday without the headache for people no longer in college or too young to even know what they were missing.

Now there are four or five options on weeknights. The hype for Thursday games has been swallowed up by terrible NFL games. The same few power programs have set up shop on those Thursdays, so you get the same product, same match-ups year after year. Friday games just become background noise for most people at the bar, at a party or a get-together because they're rarely compelling. Hell, even the Noon slot on Saturday is pure garbage week-in and week-out. The Rutgers-Iowa Slot, is what it should be renamed.

College football will need to do some pruning over the next decade and learn to try to restore some semblance of excitement for its games. The NFL might need to kill either Thursday or Monday the way the ratings are headed.

Even MACtion lost its sheen when other conferences started putting games mid-week. (Oh and the conference went away from its Arena League scoring rates from that crazy era where Toledo would outscore Western 72-68 on a Wednesday night and the football geekdom was glued to it. The conference trended towards the staidness of Row The Boat and Beau Up The Middle. A gigantic mistake from an entertainment and recruiting standpoint, imo. Also, the rest of the country caught up to the grand experiment the smaller programs were running on offense and did it with better athletes. Yet another way mid-week football became just like weekend football.)

So, weekday football? It can work. But the product better be scarce or it better be different, a product you can't get anywhere else. A product that feels different, that feels special.

MACtion had a chance to be that. It just would've taken a Bill Veeck-type vision for the conference and the product. And it would've rankled many to see the conference sort of collude and have its style centrally managed. A sort of mandate to run the spread and score a bajillion points. Officials that let offenses do whatever they want. A sham, if you want to look at it that way. The notion is icky to me, too, but it might've been necessary to build a national following.But it would've made the product so much more marketable.

Oh, as for conflicting with high school football? The high school football product isn't being swallowed by college football games on Friday nights. That's ridiculous. It's being swallowed by societal changes, population re-alignments, medical research and the notion that if a kid isn't a D-1 recruit, he isn't worth watching. It's being swallowed by the small town being swallowed. Trying to reverse that is like trying to revitalize small-town downtown shopping as a national phenomenon. It's like trying to fight a tide. Good luck with that. It's better to understand where the tastes and sensibilities are headed and re-adjust budgets and expectations accordingly.

Maybe the high school football team isn't the focal point of pride for these towns anymore. Maybe that's not as awful as some may think it will be. Maybe they find something else. Or maybe they refuse and cling to what used to unite them but is no longer valued by the larger society and grumble.

As with most things I am a traditionalist and would rather see high school games remain on Friday night and college games Saturday. I don't mind MAC Thursday, I actually prefer it to most of the NFL Thursday night games. The problem is that young people in college have far more options even in MAC college towns, where the thought of ESPN coming to Athens in the 1980s, seemed as remote to me and my friends as winning the lottery.

As far as high school football, I don't think much as changed; family and friends still turn out for games in cities, suburbs and small towns. They often go to see their kids, their relative's kids and or neighbor kids play.

In small towns the Friday night football game is the get together activity that draws people of all ages for the common purpose of socialization, certainly not for grumbling as was surmised earlier on this thread. Friday night football may have peaked, but it still has a way of bringing small towns together and hopefully that will never end. There is a lot to be learned from small towns who exhibit unity, purpose and clarity which come out in community activities such as Friday night Football.