College football’s opening weekend is upon us, and it’s staying with us for two nights that traditionally belong to the NFL: Sunday and Monday. It also includes more games on Thursday and Friday has most weeks, though none those nights are blockbusters.
Why college football’s Week 1 became a Thursday-to-Monday event
College teams and TV partners need to soak up all the attention they can get before the NFL takes over.
Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports
The later weekend brings two marquee games. Sunday has Miami-LSU at AT&T Stadium in North Texas (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC). Monday has Virginia Tech at Florida State (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).
These long Week 1s with primetime games at the tail end are still new. There’s been at least a game or two on Sunday and Monday for a long time, but the sport didn’t always have blockbusters showing each night. TV has been the driving force behind that shift.
1. It’s about cramming before the NFL season.
College football is a popular sport, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the national penetration the NFL has. Its biggest fan bases are spread throughout all sorts of areas, but the NFL has a team (or two) in all of the country’s biggest media markets. The NCAA and its schools have money, but NFL owners have money, and they use it to make their league the most ubiquitous thing in the American sports landscape.
The NFL’s regular season starts the weekend after Labor Day, and college’s starts the weekend before (with a few games going on the weekend before that). That’s always been by design — a chance for the schools and the kids to have a few minutes with the spotlight. Spreading out the slate from Thursday to Monday is just an extension of that point.
It’s similar to how the NFL schedule spreads into Saturday once college football is done.
2. TV networks love having games every night, and spreading them out gives more games the chance to be a huge deal on their own.
Live sports are the most DVR- and Netflix-proof thing a TV channel can offer. People will still turn on games on their TVs and watch them live, boosting ratings and putting money straight into the networks’ pockets. But the thing about college football is that it’s massive, with 130 teams in the FBS alone.
When college football is confined to Saturdays, the best real estate gets occupied quickly. ESPN and ABC can only broadcast one ultra-mega-primetime game per night. CBS’ main channel does one per Saturday, which it uses on its its SEC game of the week. But what about all the other games that could’ve been huge?
That’s why it’s great to spread them out. This week, in addition to a bunch of oddball games on Thursday and Friday that some might like, we’ll have:
- Saturday: Auburn-Washington in the afternoon, Michigan-Notre Dame at night
- Sunday: Miami-LSU, with nothing big against it
- Monday: Virginia Tech-FSU, also with nothing big against it
Those games are spread around between ESPN, ABC, and FOX. Each will be the most appealing game of its time slot. If they were all on Saturday, they’d have to share America’s eyeballs. Now, all of those huge games should get to be the game for a time.
The two Sunday night games in 2017 both felt huge even before they turned out to be entertaining: Texas A&M-UCLA (with that wild Bruins comeback) and West Virginia-Virginia Tech (with that raucous atmosphere and a tight finish). The Monday night game between Georgia Tech and Tennessee was a great event, too, even though both teams turned out to be bad. (Same with Notre Dame-Texas on Labor Day 2016, come to think of it.)
3. It provides more real estate for big-game sponsors.
In 2017, Chick-fil-A sponsored two neutral-site games in Week 1: Saturday night between Alabama and Florida State, Monday night between Georgia Tech and Tennessee. Because they were on different days, the fast food chain didn’t have to program against itself either night. There’s only one Chick-fil-A game in 2018, but the spread-out schedule still means that game gets more attention than it would if everything were on Saturday.
Maybe these games feel non-traditional, but they’ll keep happening.
College football won’t ever stop being a Saturday sport, but the people who run it will always look for extra exposure and cash wherever they can find it. Spreading around the Week 1 fun means higher ratings and more things to sell advertisers. Unless the NFL decides to move its season up in front of Labor Day, it’s hard to see that dynamic changing.
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