A Weeknight in the Palouse – Week 9 Preview
Good morning and happy…Thursday? Weird.
There’s something so unsettling about a mid-week game. God intended for football to be played on the same day He rested, not in the middle of the night before you can settle in to the weekend.
And bye weeks never feel exactly right. When the schedule is released, there are either not enough of them, like this season, they are after the biggest game of the year, like this season, or they are cut short by a weeknight game, like this season.
(Shoutout to the MAC and independent schools whose bye week and mid-week games are a disaster as a feature and not a bug. Part of what creates the magic on Tuesday and Wednesday nights is the godless chaos a weeknight game brings. BYU’s bye week is not until week 11(!) leading up to Utah Tech(!!!) on November 19th. Things could be way worse, Utah fans.)
All things considered, had I had my choice of where Utah could place this bye week, this is probably the best place for it. As nice as it would have been to have it between the UCLA and USC games, where it could potentially help soften the meat of the schedule, the big win hangover break, particularly with the short week coming up, was an impeccably timed break for the Utah locker room and us fans alike.
What I’m saying is, while you are watching this game at 11pm in your local timezone – which is a near certainty for every continental U.S. time zone given the kick time – consider the benefits of having a game so far from God’s light. Thursday night games are notoriously weird, poorly attended, and poorly viewed. Let your guard and your hair down tonight. It’ll be weirder than we want, and will have some ups and downs, but take solace in knowing nobody but us is watching and we have a whole week of stress-free college football ahead of us once it is over.
