Nebraska football to host Big Ten Friday night game on Fox

Nebraska football announced Wednesday that the school will move its Big Ten home opener against Illinois to Friday, Sept. 20, for a FOX national telecast.

While NU hosts Iowa every other year on Black Friday, that game lands after the conclusion of the state’s high school football season. The Sept. 20 game will compete directly with prep contests played across the state. Omaha Westside hosts Bellevue West on Sept. 20 in a marquee Class A game, for example.

It’s the first non-Black Friday, non-Saturday home game since Sept. 20, 2001, when the Huskers hosted Rice on a Thursday night — nine days after 9/11. It was the first major college football game played after the terrorist attacks. 

Since then, NU has played several road games on Thursday night — at Southern Mississippi in 2003 and at Kansas State in 2010, among other games — and Nebraska is no stranger to Friday night Big Ten games.

At the start of a Big Ten TV contract in 2017, when former athletic director Shawn Eichorst set the school’s “tolerance” level for non-Saturday games — a tolerance setting that continued into a new TV contract. The Huskers have been candidates to be selected by Fox for a Friday night slot. NU beat Illinois in 2017, Rutgers in 2020, Rutgers in 2022 and Illinois in 2023 in Friday night road contests. Nebraska also played at Minnesota in 2023 on a Thursday night.

This will be Nebraska’s first Friday night home game under that tolerance system. In August 2017, then-University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor Ronnie Green predicted the Huskers would never host a Friday night home game.

“It’s difficult for us to conceive doing this on our campus,” Green said then.

But in a rare quirk, all of NU’s 2024 Big Ten road games are either already on Black Friday (at Iowa) or the opponents’ homecoming weekend (at Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State and USC). Typically, schools play homecoming games to accommodate alumni returning to campus.

And hosting Illinois on Friday night will give Nebraska four Saturdays off during the regular season. NU will have two bye weeks and two Friday games. By playing the Illini on Friday night, the Huskers will get an extra day of rest/preparation for their first road game of the season at Purdue. The Boilermakers play a 7:30 p.m. game at Oregon State that weekend and will not return to their campus until Sunday morning at the earliest.

The Huskers/Illini game is part of a robust, aggressive push by Fox to claim Friday night football for itself. Previously, games had been aired on FS1, drawing modest ratings against more publicized games on ESPN. Last year, according to Sports Media Watch, Nebraska’s Oct. 6 Friday night win over Illinois drew 1.36 million viewers, while Oklahoma State’s win over Kansas State drew 2.27 million viewers to ESPN.

The Big Ten and its TV partners are expected to announce additional game times and broadcast information before the end of May.