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As part of the Big Ten's new television deal with ESPN and Fox beginning in 2017, the conference will start playing games on Friday night next season. Not all the members of the Big Ten are excited about the deal, however.

Michigan flat-out told the Big Ten it's not interested in playing on Fridays at all, and on Thursday night, Jim Harbaugh tweeted out that he's "disappointed" in the conference's decision to play on Fridays because it "infringes" on high school football's night.

On Wednesday afternoon, Penn State released a statement saying it isn't interested in hosting games on Friday night, though it will consider playing the occasional Friday night road game.

Michigan and Penn State weren't alone, either. Ohio State is willing to host games on Friday nights, but only under certain conditions, and the same can be said about Wisconsin and Michigan State. Wisconsin released a statement of their own on Wednesday night, essentially stating that it will play on Friday nights, but only before Labor Day, and not every year.

Michigan State already plays one home game on a Friday night during the season, and it doesn't plan on playing any more than that.

And I get it.

Having weeknight games is nothing new in the world of college football. With so many networks broadcasting games and needing to fill time slots, conferences have been playing games on weeknights for a while, and it was a situation that worked out well for all involved. The networks got inventory, and schools that may not have attracted much of a television audience on a Saturday suddenly found themselves on national television as a spotlight game, garnering viewers that normally wouldn't even think about watching them play.

For schools like these, though, they don't really need that kind of exposure. They're already major brands in the college football world, so it's not exactly a surprise to see them bristling at the idea of messing with a well-established tradition that's worked out just fine for them.

If I'm Purdue, Illinois, or a similar Big Ten school, though, I'm excited about the chance to play on a Friday night because odds are greater that more people will watch my games during that time slot than they would if I were playing on a Saturday morning at the same time as 10 other games on television.

If anybody should have a problem with the Big Ten playing games on Friday nights it should be conferences like the Mountain West, American and others who currently fill the Friday night landscape. If I'm them, I don't want the Big Ten stealing viewers away from my teams, which is exactly what's going to happen.