Tulsa had 3 of the top 8 TV viewership AAC games in 2018, and there can be no doubt playing the one Thursday and two Friday games played a huge part in getting these very good TV numbers. Tulsa, the last school to be invited to AAC (because Boise State went for $1.8M cash grab) has to do things to boost the conference. And these large TV viewerships on Thursday and Friday nights boost Tulsa also. Boise State fans claim playing Thursday and Friday night games help boost their football program.
I think the Thur/Fri telecasts are also a good recruiting tool
That was true until they got really popular. At that point, their city leaders got greedy and saw that the weekday games were hurting the local merchant boosters and their hotel occupancy tax receipts were lower. So there is a lot of pressure to avoid those games from boosters and the locals in Boise now. I’m pretty tight with one of their bull boosters
. Even the cops don’t like it in the small towns because it means some officers are working doubles after their regular weekday afternoon shift.
In my case, it cost my bar approximately $25K in gross receipts every time there was a weekday game in the small southern college town where it was located. You play the game on Thursday and guys like me lose all the hotel, food and beverage business you normally get on a Friday before the game. This has a multimillion dollar impact on small college towns. I know restaurant owners that went under because of two Thursday games and two noon Saturday kickoffs one season. It’s like taking Black Friday away from retailers. That school fights tooth and nail with ESPN to avoid those games for these reasons and more that have little to do with who buys a ticket or which high school gets pissed off because their gate is down because State U is on TV.
TU doesn’t really have any of these problems, needs the exposure and once upon a time had a brand of football people wanted to watch back East, even if they had a negative opinion of G5 football or the State of Oklahoma. The guys out there sacrificing their bodies for a general studies degree want to be on national TV. They like having Saturday nights free occasionally to go out with their friends like a normal college student. Their girlfriends appreciate a Saturday date once in awhile. If you don’t think that’s important to on field performance, you’ve never been inside the head of a college athlete.
It’s a pain in the ass for some of us, and I don’t like sitting up until midnight on a work night, but the positives to playing these games far out weighs the negatives. The only downside that can’t be denied is the loss of practice days and that can be managed with a bye week before hand.
TU should be courting these games, winning them by means other than throwing 7 passes a game, then tweeting every recruit asking them if they were watching.
