Y11 Notes: Some Game Times Announced
Happy Thursday. We’re only 92 days away from the start of EMU’s football season with a home game against Howard.
In fact, depending on when you’re reading this, your count down may know how many hours and minutes there are leading up to the day’s kick time. Yesterday, MAC teams announced kickoff times to a number of their upcoming games.
For Eastern Michigan, six games were published. Seven, if we count the MAC Championship game.
Fri., Sept. 1 vs. Howard, 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sat., Sept. 9 at Minnesota, 7:30 p.m. (B1G Network)
Sat., Sept. 16 vs. UMass, 2 p.m. (ESPN+)
Wed., Nov. 8 at Toledo, 7/7:30 p.m. (tbd- ESPN2/ESPNU/CBSSN)
Tues., Nov 14 vs. Akron, 7 p.m. (tbd- ESPN2/ESPNU/CBSSN)
Tues., Nov. 21 at Buffalo, 7/7:30 p.m. (tbd- ESPN2/ESPNU)
MAC Championship: Sat., Dec. 2, noon (ESPN)
Obviously, paying to watch EMU play behind the ESPN+ paywall stinks in terms of 1. having to spend money at all and 2. having a good experience while streaming the game, but it’s not new to us at this point anymore either.
Personally, as a fan of all things football, I wish EMU’s road trip to Minnesota could be a noon kickoff instead of 7:30 in the evening.
That day, the Big Ten Network will be showing Youngstown at Ohio State at noon, regional showings of Richmond at Michigan State and UTEP at Northwestern at 3:30 p.m., and regional viewings of EMU at Minnesota and Temple at Rutgers at 7:30 p.m.
If EMU were to end up beating Minnesota, Eastern would have to wait until after 11 p.m. to be able to celebrate and post its victories. In a perfect world, EMU would want to be able to post its Big Ten-winning victories before dinnertime and let its popularity grow throughout the day on Saturday, not hope for a second wind early on Sunday.
Opening the season at home on a Friday night against an FCS opponent is a normal event at this point, it’s nothing new that some parents of siblings in this sport may have to pick which parent goes to Rynearson and which other parent will go to the high school game that night. EMU’s not alone in hosting a Friday night game, and EMU does it because it’s usually a good formula for decent attendance numbers. The weather’s almost always great that time of year, and Rynearson’s best game presentation is during the evening.
Seeing UMass at 2 p.m. is such a bummer of a time slot. Feels very Mountain West-y, but ESPN needs some content to begin at 2 p.m., and EMU vs. UMass isn’t exactly a property that’s high on the list of Mickey Mouse’s priorities.
I don’t have much to comment on for the MACtion games outside of the Toledo matchup. ESPN used to have Toledo vs. NIU as its primetime MACtion darling to kick off its month of midweek games in November, but now we’ve totally transitioned into Toledo vs. EMU being the MAC West matchup to circle this year.
Times really have changed.