Mark Coyle addresses fan reaction to Indiana game moved to a Friday night

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Hey guys, we received a strongly worded letter from Mark Coyle

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Let's face it, even if it impacts some of the biggest football diehards in MN this is about TV revenue. It is what it is.

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bizzle22 said:
As long as one of our games in the couple years after this one also gets moved to Friday night there is no net negative there. If that doesn't happen I might be a little bit upset, but still...it's really not a big deal.
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As long as one more game gets moved too that's ... good?
 

I do not get all the outrage over these games on Friday; we probably only would play one every few years.

As a person that would prefer to watch CFB on TV over anything else, I welcome any decision that brings more quality games to other nights of the week. I look forward to seeing a good Pac10 game on Friday night around 9 PM many Friday's this year, and also prefer to see a Big Ten game as well over some Sunbelt game. I will watch the MAC, Sunbelt, CUSA games when they are on though.

I remember walking around the Redondo Beach Pier the Friday night before the Gopher USC game back in 2011 and when I sat down at the bar and looked up to see the TCU- Baylor game just starting on the TV I was thrilled. It was a very good game in in SoCal, over half the people at the large bar were glued to the game. It was great exposure for TCU and Baylor and good for me as CFB fan.

I think the Big Ten teams that would play on a Friday will get better national exposure than they might as one of 10 plus games going on at the same time on Saturday.

I do go to HS games in MN on occasion and they are not all that well attended. Who cares if 1,000 Gopher fans decide on a Friday once every 4 or so years that they are not going to the game at TCF because they are choosing a HS game over it. We have large bunches of season ticket holders that choose to not attend Gopher games now because it might rain, it is 45 degrees, or they just do not like the crap team we scheduled OOC. I always go regardless, but this is not exactly a crisis.
 

Ope3 said:
If it's going to be too cold for many to go to a 1st Round Class 6A HS game, then I suspect they will also avoid Gophers/Hoosiers as the temps will be the same.
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Exactly, date of game is a non-issue.
 

oak_street1981 said:
I do not get all the outrage over these games on Friday; we probably only would play one every few years.

As a person that would prefer to watch CFB on TV over anything else, I welcome any decision that brings more quality games to other nights of the week. I look forward to seeing a good Pac10 game on Friday night around 9 PM many Friday's this year, and also prefer to see a Big Ten game as well over some Sunbelt game. I will watch the MAC, Sunbelt, CUSA games when they are on though.

I remember walking around the Redondo Beach Pier the Friday night before the Gopher USC game back in 2011 and when I sat down at the bar and looked up to see the TCU- Baylor game just starting on the TV I was thrilled. It was a very good game in in SoCal, over half the people at the large bar were glued to the game. It was great exposure for TCU and Baylor and good for me as CFB fan.

I think the Big Ten teams that would play on a Friday will get better national exposure than they might as one of 10 plus games going on at the same time on Saturday.

I do go to HS games in MN on occasion and they are not all that well attended. Who cares if 1,000 Gopher fans decide on a Friday once every 4 or so years that they are not going to the game at TCF because they are choosing a HS game over it. We have large bunches of season ticket holders that choose to not attend Gopher games now because it might rain, it is 45 degrees, or they just do not like the crap team we scheduled OOC. I always go regardless, but this is not exactly a crisis.
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+1.

Go Gophers!!
 


It seems to me that if Friday games are necessity for the Big 10 revenue plan then it should apply to everyone in the conference.

It also seems strange to me in the tight knit Gopher football community that there is constant questions or complaints why attendance or interest is not all that it could be, but when push comes to shove most of the comments on here or at other Gopher sites on issues of mass Gopher appeal seem to be "Well I'll watch either way and everyone else be damned."
 

It's not that big of a deal to me. We play non-conference games on Thursday nights. So what if we play another non-conference game on a Friday night? People will adjust. I bet people will come for nostalgic reasons alone to see a former B1G team in the Indiana Hoosiers.
 

Fun Facts:

Middle Tennessee St has played at TCF twice.
Eastern, Northern, and Western Illinois have all played at TCF (The Saluki's must be pissed they haven't been invited)
Indiana STATE has played at TCF.
6 different MAC teams have played at TCF.
4 different Mountain West teams have played at TCF
3 teams from the Dakota's have played at TCF
3 different PAC-12 teams have played at TCF

The Indiana freaking Hoosiers have never played at TCF. WHAT THE F?
 

I think the whole high school football thing is being blown out of proportion in this case. Most fans at those high school games are usually family members, friends, high school students.

Looking at the big picture from afar, I don't think it would impact Gopher attendance more than a couple thousand fans. High school football has done the same thing shifting a lot of games to Thursday nights and Saturday nights. When I grew up, section finals and state quarterfinals were always on Friday nights, now they are both Friday and Saturday nights. So the same thing can be said about high school football moving their days around to accommodate the neutral sites.

Indiana is the opponent so the game will draw your typical 35,000-40,000 regardless of whether it's a Saturday afternoon or Friday night.
 



Yet, a couple of thousand is 5% of the attendees based on 40k. That's a large figure when 10% of STH base appears to have been lost in the last few years.
 


Pewterschmidt said:
Fun Facts:

Middle Tennessee St has played at TCF twice.
Eastern, Northern, and Western Illinois have all played at TCF (The Saluki's must be pissed they haven't been invited)
Indiana STATE has played at TCF.
6 different MAC teams have played at TCF.
4 different Mountain West teams have played at TCF
3 teams from the Dakota's have played at TCF
3 different PAC-12 teams have played at TCF

The Indiana freaking Hoosiers have never played at TCF. WHAT THE F?
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The additions of Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers in combination with the move from no divisions to Legends/Leaders and then to West/East, not to mention Indiana and Purdue winding up in separate divisions with a guarantee they will play every season, messed up the schedule rotation. At least one and maybe two Hoosiers-Gophers games in Minneapolis were wiped out due to all of this.

As for Friday games, it’s not ideal, but it’s something we can’t seem to avoid. My only concern is we already play a Thursday game before Labor Day. That means we will only have 5 football Saturdays at home that season, which isn’t as fun as a fan.
 

Pewterschmidt said:
Fun Facts:

Middle Tennessee St has played at TCF twice.
Eastern, Northern, and Western Illinois have all played at TCF (The Saluki's must be pissed they haven't been invited)
Indiana STATE has played at TCF.
6 different MAC teams have played at TCF.
4 different Mountain West teams have played at TCF
3 teams from the Dakota's have played at TCF
3 different PAC-12 teams have played at TCF

The Indiana freaking Hoosiers have never played at TCF. WHAT THE F?
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]

I think at this point, we should just give them directions to the Vikings stadium, just to mess with them some more.
 



RodentRampage said:
]

I think at this point, we should just give them directions to the Vikings stadium, just to mess with them some more.
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I'm not worried about Indiana playing at TCF.

I love night games.

I'm sure the Big Ten could say "If you don't play Friday night, you don't get Friday night Revenue".
But then OSU and Mich could pull a Texas and say "Well, if you don't play in the MICH-OSU game, you don't get revenue from the MICH-OSU game".
Trouble ensues.

We're sucking hind teat on this, and sometimes you just need to know your spot and play when they ask you to play.
 

Face The Facts said:
I'm not worried about Indiana playing at TCF.

I love night games.

I'm sure the Big Ten could say "If you don't play Friday night, you don't get Friday night Revenue".
But then OSU and Mich could pull a Texas and say "Well, if you don't play in the MICH-OSU game, you don't get revenue from the MICH-OSU game".
Trouble ensues.

We're sucking hind teat on this, and sometimes you just need to know your spot and play when they ask you to play.
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Underrated/underused expression
 

Pompous Elitist said:
Let's face it, even if it impacts some of the biggest football diehards in MN this is about TV revenue. It is what it is.

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Great song.

I really don't care about high school football, so this doesn't affect me....but I'd be pissed if I were a family member (especially one with season tickets) of a high school football player who has a game that night. The Big Ten better spread this around. If not, Coyle better speak up.
 

Friday night college football on ESPN was practically invented by Minnesota.
Not sure what the outrage is about. It's going to be 1 game like every 4 years. And it puts a lot of eyes on a game no one nationally would care about otherwise.
 

Goldmember said:
Friday night college football on ESPN was practically invented by Minnesota.
Not sure what the outrage is about. It's going to be 1 game like every 4 years. And it puts a lot of eyes on a game no one nationally would care about otherwise.
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Only outrage is that it isn’t MEA weekend.
Minnesota has one Friday night all fall that is a guaranteed non conflict with high school football.
MEA Friday zero 6A schools play. And zero 9-man through 5A schools play. It is actually better for high school football for the gophers to play on MEA Friday. I’d be okay if they made it an every year thing.

Meanwhile, they picked a different Friday and I won’t be able to attend. Life goes on.
 

Spoofin said:
Agreed. As far as Coyle's statements go, this one was pretty good. He expressed his disappointment w/o whining. It is what it is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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and it was actually coherent. But it was a blog post, likely written by a student coming off a three day bender and still more coherent than anything that comes out of Coyle's mouth. Thankfully it wasn't a live interview.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
This impacts 15 to 16 HS games (31 teams in 6A this year). These games are also first round for 6A and include 2v7 and 1v8 seeded games. With potential cold weather, no one goes to these first round games. Average margin of victory in the first round last Friday was over 24 points per game. Yes MEA would be ideal, but playing on Saturday would be up against 96 section semi-final games. Playing on the Thursday of Labor Day is more annoying to me.
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Higher seeds were also 14-1
 

Some guy said:
Only outrage is that it isn’t MEA weekend. ....Meanwhile, they picked a different Friday and I won’t be able to attend.
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Minnesota does not have a home game scheduled on an MEA weekend until 2020 vs. Michigan.

This isn't about A problem with what MN picked. The problem is that the B1G is underestimating the burden on the programs that agree to Fri games.

The very least the Conference should be doing is shuffling future conference schedules to give Minnesota an IN/IL/Purdue/Rutgers/MD/NW home game after a bye week every other year on MEA weekend.

And the conference should make the same accommodation for other teams that agree to an occasional Fri night game. But I doubt the B1G cares enough about their Fri Night program to disrupt schedules like that.
 


Goldmember said:
Minnesota does not have a home game scheduled on an MEA weekend until 2020 vs. Michigan.

This isn't about A problem with what MN picked. The problem is that the B1G is underestimating the burden on the programs that agree to Fri games.

The very least the Conference should be doing is shuffling future conference schedules to give Minnesota an IN/IL/Purdue/Rutgers/MD/NW home game after a bye week every other year on MEA weekend.

And the conference should make the same accommodation for other teams that agree to an occasional Fri night game. But I doubt the B1G cares enough about their Fri Night program to disrupt schedules like that.
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Yeah. Out of their hands. I won’t be able to go to that one or a Thursday night opener.
Too involved in high school football. Also can’t go to the first half of 11am games until MEA weekend due to Saturday Morning HS football obligations.
 

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