Battle for Friday night's lights: Prep coaches aren't fans of Big 12 commissioner's plan

Westlake football coach Tony Salazar didn’t hold anything back.

Echoing the sentiments of probably every high school football coach across the state of Texas, when he heard Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark say in July that the conference would look into playing more Friday night games, he was not happy.

“Allowing college programs and people there with the agenda of making money take precedence over the tradition of high school athletics is wrong,” said Salazar, whose team opens its season Friday night at Fort Bend Ridge Point. “They need to stay out of the domain of high school athletics. Friday nights are the greatest thing going on across the state of Texas.”

Yormark, who doesn’t have any ties to the state and grew up in New Jersey, doesn’t shy away from controversy, as evidenced by his comments Wednesday when he told Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire to “take care of business” against Texas in the last meeting between the two before the Longhorns leave for the SEC.

Still, his comments from Big 12 media days reeked of ignorance about football at the prep level in Texas, considering that the conference will still have Tech, TCU, Baylor and Houston, and that many other members heavily recruit the state.

Every local high school coach that the American-Statesman talked to panned the idea.

“I just think it shows a shortsighted approach,” Vandegrift's Drew Sanders said. “We’re the bloodline of their game. They should be supporting Friday night lights — that’s an American tradition. Friday should be reserved for high school athletics. … I think it’s sad they are thinking of doing that, and I don’t think it rewards the people that bring them their future players.”

It's about more than just Friday nights

It’s a decision that could have unforeseen effects.

Aside from the conflict of attendance and sharing the same night, area coaches said it would hurt their players in other ways. They would be limited in the number of college games they could attend for recruiting visits, and they wouldn’t be seen and scouted on Fridays in person as much by college coaches.

It's also worth noting that SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey seems to be against the idea, too.

His conference played only one game on a Friday night last fall, and it was in late November.

"I think we better think carefully about our impact on high school football," Sankey told the Texas high school coaches association convention in July.

College coaches have mixed feelings

Wisely, most college coaches in Texas have not come out in favor of the idea, though, strangely, since he was a high school coach in the state for 21 years, McGuire called it "a phenomenal idea" and credited Yormark for "thinking outside the box" at media days.

A week later he told 247Sports that he was OK with Thursday games, but that Fridays present another issue.

“That’s the reality in the state of Texas,” McGuire said. “That can hurt our attendance from the standpoint of fans are going to go to their high school games. … I do think there’s something there. We just have to make sure it’s right.”

More: Our top 100 Central Texas high school football players to watch this season

Houston coach Dana Holgersen didn’t denigrate the idea, but also didn’t endorse it, while other coaches in the Big 12 are enthusiastically in favor of it.

Though Kansas uses Texas as a recruiting base — one of Salazar’s wideouts from a year ago, Keaton Kubecka, is a Jayhawks freshman — KU coach Lance Leipold said his program could use the exposure.

“We play Illinois in week 2 on Friday this year, and the opportunity to be on ESPN2 in a standalone game is something this program couldn’t pass up,” Leipold told WHB radio in Kansas City last week. “Otherwise, you may be on ESPNU on Saturday competing against 12 other games.”

Kansas also opens the season playing on a Friday night, and with other conferences such as the ACC increasing Friday night games in recent years, Leipold doesn’t see the trend slowing down.

“With conference realignment, this is going to continue at the Power Five level,” he said. “With TV revenues, windows and opportunities, it’s happening.”

But whether it happens in Texas is another question.

Ultimately, Yormark’s job is to make the conference money, and more Friday games will probably do that.

However, like Salazar and Sanders, new UIL director of athletics Ray Zepeda hopes he reconsiders.

“I think that the Friday night experience here in Texas is a special one,” Zepeda said. “It’s very difficult for me to kind of speculate on what the Big 12 should do, but I would hope, given that they have so many members here in the state of Texas, that they would honor Friday night as something that’s set aside for high school athletics.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Changing TV landscape could infringe on high schools' special night