High school football generally reigns supreme on Friday nights, but this week BYU and Utah State will try to steal the show to kick off the weekend.
“Utah State, from what I here, is a fun place to play, especially when BYU comes to town,” quarterback Max Hall said. “I think it’s going to be a fun atmosphere and a full stadium. It’s the Friday night lights again and it’s going to be good to play a night game.”
Friday night games have been the norm between the two schools in the past, mostly because of religious issues. Both universities have a high number of students and athletes who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which holds a semi-annual general conference session near the beginning of October each year.
While the teams enjoy playing each other because of the proximity and history, the logistics of scheduling around general conference is also an important factor.
“We’re going to have to deal with general conference conflicts on the schedule every year, and one way to handle that pretty simply is to schedule Utah State on conference weekend on a Friday,” BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said. “We used to do that in the olden days a lot, and it’s good for both teams.”
Despite its rich history, the rivalry between the two schools has tapered off in recent years. The teams met every year from 1946 to 1994, then played every year except for 1995 and 1998 until their series ended in 2002. They last met in 2006, on a Saturday, with the Cougars shutting out the Aggies 38-0.
Starting this week, however, the teams will reignite their rivalry, as the teams will play eachother every year through 2012.
Weekday games usually provide a unique challenge for teams because the short week limits the amount of preparation that can be done before the game. BYU, however, is coming off a bye week and should not have any problems as far as preparation goes.
“It would be much different if we didn’t have a bye,” coach Bronco Mendenhall said. “We were able to get in ex-tra practices, maybe too many practices for a given opponent. We tried not to overdo it, because if we spent too much time the players might become bored or stagnant toward the end.”
Though technically not much different from any other games, weekday games bring with them a different atmos-phere and sense of excitement for the players.
“Traditionally, the games are played on Saturday afternoons, so the team is used to that,” Holmoe said. “When you play in the evening, it’s a very different feeling. The night atmosphere reminds you of high school, because most high schools play on Friday nights. I can’t say there’s more pressure because of the timing of the game, but it’s a little bit different from normal games.”
BYU has a record of 16-11 the past 10 seasons in games that are not played on Saturday, and they are 4-1 since Mendenhall took over in 2005. The team also has a 34-20 record in night games during that same period, with a 9-4 record in night games the past three seasons.
The last time BYU played on a Friday night was in 2004, when it was defeated at home by UNLV 24-20. Their last weekday game was a 27-22 win over TCU in 2007.
Copyright Brigham Young University 2 Oct 2008
