September 19, 2008
College athletic directors and presidents can be downright shameless when it comes to finding new ways to generate revenue, and nowhere is their naked ambition more obvious than when it comes to scheduling games on weeknights. It's a trend that has grown exponentially in recent years thanks to the thirst for television exposure, and now there are schools that would play on a Tuesday at 2 a.m. on an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico if you guaranteed it would be on ESPN2.
Enough is enough. At some point, we have to stop pretending it's OK to ask amateur athletes to do the bidding of giant businesses (which is really what Division I football programs have become, businesses) but demand they uphold academic standards that allow us to use the term student-athlete with a straight face.
College football should be played on Saturdays. Period. At the very least, it should be limited to two days a week, Thursdays and Saturdays, and you only get to play a Thursday game if you're coming off a bye week. It's completely ridiculous to ask college football players to play night road games that end at midnight, then catch a plane back home that lands at 3 a.m., then tell them they have to be on time for a 9 a.m. class. But countless teams do it every year.
Saturday afternoons in the fall are sacred: The smell of brats and beer, the girls in their cut-off jerseys, the roar of an anxious student body. It's magical. The fans can sleep off their hangovers on Sunday morning, the players can nurse their bruises while watching NFL games, and college presidents and athletic directors can count their cash while skipping church. It's the perfect arrangement.
Television, and the thirst for exposure, shouldn't barf all over 100 years of tradition.
