They are disappointing several thousand Illinois fans (maybe) while delighting hundreds of thousands of national college football fans. A relative few more butts in the seats does not match the financial value of a televised game.
Illini Football 2026
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
Friday night is probably the weakest viewing night of the week for TV. Many people are out doing other things after working all week. The only reason live sports is on TV Friday nights is because no one wants to watch anything else.
Yes... Friday night football is the reason for this data. Correlation without causation at its finest. Although, I wouldn't even say the actual data correlates at all if you actually look at the rate of Friday night college games compared to the total number of games over that span.
Anyway, in actual response to this though, here are two articles from the same website (NHFS.org). This first one is in direct response to the data that was used to generate graph above: https://nfhs.org/stories/high-school-football-is-thriving-not-dying.
What's interesting, is that the graph above ends at 2018. This article, also form NFHS.org has a follow up to that data with even more recent data. This article is from 2025: https://nfhs.org/stories/high-school-football-continues-to-rebound-from-pre-pandemic-decline.
The best is this last line: "While some college conferences continue to schedule games on Friday nights, it is clear that high school football remains the lifeblood of communities on this special night during the fall." remember, this is from this past September. Not some article 20 years ago.
