The third week of the high school football season marks a major shift for the Big Eight Conference, with a full slate of games scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 31, instead of Friday, Sept. 1.
In another break with tradition, the Wisconsin Badgers open their season Sept. 1 — a Friday night — at Camp Randall against Utah State at 8 p.m. But that’s not the reason for the one-week-only version of Thursday Night Lights — as many fans might believe.
Jeremy Schlitz, director of athletics for the Madison Metropolitan School District (and also at Madison Memorial High School), told the Wisconsin State Journal last month that the scheduling change was made to allow players, coaches and fans to observe Eid al-Adha, the second of two annual Muslim holidays that this year is on Sept. 1. Eid al-Adha also is known as the “Sacrifice Feast.”
That means Madison-area football fans don’t have to choose between watching the Badgers or Madison West at Middleton. Others interested in Monona Grove at Oregon or Waunakee at Mount Horeb/Barneveld — just two games among a full non-Big Eight slate of area Friday-night matchups — have a decision to make, though. And unfortunately, gate receipts at host schools likely will take a hit.
Eid al-Adha honors the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to follow God’s command and sacrifice his young first-born son. The dates on which it is celebrated vary from year to year, and the commemoration generally begins 11 days earlier than the previous year. That means Eid al-Adha is not expected to occur again on high school football game nights for several years.
Last fall, the Big Ten announced plans to schedule six prime-time games on Friday nights throughout September and October. “We saw this as an opportunity for significant exposure and more favorable use of national platforms for Big Ten football,” Mark Rudner, the conference’s senior associate commissioner for television administration, told Big Ten news site LandOf10.com. In other words, it’s all about the conference’s new six-year deal with ESPN and Fox.
Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez made it clear in a statement that Friday night Badger games will not be the norm: “We are open to hosting games at Camp Randall on the Friday night prior to Labor Day weekend in selected years but have not committed to hosting Friday night games at any other time.”
If that changes, though, Schlitz has said the Big Eight won’t alter its own football schedule to accommodate UW’s schedule.
