Why are college football games (generally) on Saturdays and NFL football games (generally) on Sundays? I figure there’s some sort of reason (advertising?), but haven’t found even the question, let alone an answer, in my Wiki, Google, or SDMB search.
Any idea?
High School plays on Friday, college on Saturday and the pros play on Sunday. The reason that they play on different days is because they all cooperate with each other for the good of the sport.
The NFL does put games on Saturdays after the NCAA season ends.
They used to. I think they stopped that after the NFL Network started and the Thursday Night game was introduced.
To the best of my knowledge college football has always been played on Saturdays, I suspect because of blue laws. When the NFL was just starting (and for a long time afterward) college football was much more popular than pro football.
I would bet that pro football leagues didn’t want to get into a competition that they couldn’t win by playing the games simultaneously with college teams.
Remember – when the NFL was getting started, college and HS football was far more popular – and HS football was played on Saturday (since the technology to light the field was too expensive). (Saturday was chosen because there were no classes or church (which was often mandatory in college)).
The NFL chose Sunday because otherwise all their fans would be attending high school and college games.
I suppose the more interesting question is whether high school football was always played on Friday, or whether it moved to Fridays at some time in the recent past. It seems to me like Saturday would be a more obvious choice in the old days before lighting, as I can’t imagine Friday afternoon games would have been a popular choice with school administrators.
I do recall our high school playing one game on a Saturday afternoon, and one of our older coaches claimed that it was common when he was a high school student to play on Saturday morning or afternoon in rural Pennsylvania, when artificial lighting was nonexistent. Hearsay evidence, but one data point I suppose.
Thanks, everyone. I wasn’t considering that originally NFL football was both late to the game (so to speak!) and less popular than high school/college football. That explains it!
When I was in high school (mid/late '80s), home games were always on Saturdays because our field didn’t have lights. Some away games were on Friday nights.
Where I live now, trick-or-treating is always on the Thursday before October 31st, to ensure that it never falls on a Friday/interferes with a high school football game.
It seems to me that when I was in High School in the '80s, we had a lot of Saturday games. Could be because college football is not real big in New England, or (more likely) I am just misremembering.
Depends on what you mean by “recent”. I can guarantee my high school played most of its home games Friday evenings going back at least 30 years.
In Minnesota, there are a number of games played Friday afternoon. Many of these are in the Minneapolis and St. Paul city conferences. Also, JV games and below (7th-10th grade teams) were played after school (about 4:00 or so) on random non-Friday weekdays. In an area where high school football may not be a huge draw, it’s not much of a stretch to schedule it in the same way you would any other outdoor sport for which you don’t have lights, which could easily mean Friday afternoon.
I’m also from New England, and our high school games were always on Saturday as well.
No, they still do it. With the Holidays and therefore Bowl Games falling on Saturdays this year the NFL cut back a little bit. There was a NFL game on Xmas night and if last Saturday hadn’t been Jan 1st there’d have been a second one.
High School Homecoming games tend to be played on Saturdays to allow for all the additional pomp and circumstance and to allow more Alumni to attend if they are now out in the workforce in different towns and cities. Many schools will play their own Homecoming game on a Saturday and then play one or two more games on Saturday as the visiting team for opponents’ Homecomings.
Of course some schools may play more Saturday games than others for other reasons, especially in places where other sports may share a stadium but Friday is the norm.
Thinking back more, I’m pretty sure all our home games, at least, were on Saturday, because I don’t recall us having night games or even having lights. In fact I remember being surprised to learn when I moved to the midwest that the games were on Friday nights.
How long ago was this? I’d be surprised that many schools with significant enrollment and a football program of any merit still lack lights. I’m sure there are plenty of parts of the country where HS games don’t draw crowds but around here just about every park district field, swimming pool, basketball court and township parking lot has lights. That the HS field would be without would be bizarre in the extreme.
This was the mid-80s.
Damn it, now I’m going to have to get my yearbook out and look for pictures of the football field. Maybe we had lights but I’m 80% sure most of our games were on Saturday morning.
High school teams up north may want to play during the day due to cold weather late in the season.
My HS football games in upstate NY in the 1970’s. saturday afternoon FB games at the high school field no lights. Occasionally we played at the minor league Baseball park under the lights on Friday. the away games that I went to were day games.
Hypothesis: in upstate NY and New England, night games tend to get really cold in October and day games in September would not be that hot like they would in the Southern States.
Also college Football does not have near the passion like it does in other parts of the country.
Yeah, no one really cared about college football except for the occasional Notre Dame or Boston College game. And, of course, the Notre Dame-Boston College game.
Nobody cared about pro football in the south for many years because they had no pro teams. By the time pro football moved south college FB was already very big.
Nah. HS football season is over by Thanksgiving. Most teams play their last regular season game around Halloween. Even in the Upper Midwest it’s not that cold in early November. Plus no self-respecting Northerner would make any such concession to the cold and weather.
Agreed, Omni. My HS played Friday night games both home and away, mid-to-late 80s in Connecticut.