Friday night football schedules to collide

Steve Addy

Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2001 | 10:19 a.m.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Here is ESPN's tentative Friday college football schedule (times Pacific):

During the third quarter of the Northwestern-at-UNLV football game Friday night, 11 high school games will be kicking off around Las Vegas.

Time won't stand still. The ground won't shake. And there won't be a procession of cars from Sam Boyd Stadium to Cheyenne High, or Foothill, or Durango, or any of the other eight game sites.

But at that moment, college and high school football schedules will collide on a Friday for the first time, the contentious result of a May NCAA ruling permitting prime time telecasts on Friday nights.

ESPN's rush to schedule two UNLV games and others on Friday night this season has angered high school officials locally and nationally. They fear that this encroachment on their formerly sacred night will lead to widespread Friday college football, inflicting irreparable harm on the high school game.

UNLV and Northwestern will kick off at 5 p.m., two hours before the high schools, so the games will overlap. The same will occur next Friday when UNLV hosts Colorado State at 5.

Despite worries over what they view as a dangerous precedent, state and local high school officials aren't especially fearful that UNLV will draw fans away from their games. They believe the Rebels will suffer more from the scheduling conflict.

But UNLV expects a crowd of nearly 25,000 for Northwestern, a figure surpassed only once in the regular season last year, so obviously many fans have opted for the Rebels' home opener.

Though the rhetoric on both sides has cooled somewhat in the months since the Friday games were announced, all of the parties have their cleats dug firmly into the turf.

"We don't want to fight UNLV. I understand what they're trying to do," said Jerry Hughes, executive director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA). "But Nevada doesn't look really good in this situation."

"It's kind of a slap in the face to high school sports," said Larry McKay, athletic director for the Clark County School District. "It's too bad it had to happen, but we're going to play our games on Friday night and so will UNLV. They have their reasons, and who am I to question them?"

UNLV athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro was unavailable for comment, but hasn't tried to obscure his rationale for scheduling the Friday night games: national exposure and TV money.

"We're going to have five nationally televised games, exposure we've never had before, and we're glad," he said in May.

Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, who facilitated the ESPN games, doesn't feel Friday college football is a detriment to high schools.

"If I'm UNLV, I certainly would do it again," he said.

However, many larger conferences (with more lucrative TV contracts) are now vowing to stay away from Friday night, including the Big Ten, ACC, SEC and Big East. Minnesota had been scheduled to open at Toledo last Friday, but got Toledo to agree to move the game to Thursday.

That left the Northwestern-UNLV game as the test case, with another to come next Friday.

McKay and Hughes are irked because they feel the Mountain West didn't give them adequate notice of its Friday night plans, then "strongly suggested" they move the high school games to Thursday this week and next.

"Thursday wasn't an alternative for us," McKay said. "We didn't feel that request was fair. There's more to Friday nights than just the football game.

"We weren't told in advance, not that (the MWC) needs our permission. But if they were truly concerned about high school sports, they would have brought us into the loop on the discussions."

Hughes said, "We would have been willing to play on Thursday, but not back-to-back weeks, because it's a school night and you can't keep kids out late and have dances. But by the time we were told (by the MWC), it was pretty much a done deal."

Thompson also suggested high schools start their games an hour later to avoid butting heads with UNLV games.

"That wouldn't accomplish much for us," McKay said. "It still wouldn't give a person the opportunity to go to both (UNLV and a high school game). A college game is three hours. Once you get out of the parking lot, you couldn't make it to a high school game.

"Personally, I don't think UNLV's games will have any effect on our (ticket) sales. Most high school fans have a particular rooting interest in the game -- as a parent, student and friend. In general, they're people who don't go to UNLV games."