I read the following on the Rival's college football message board. " LSU plays during the day these days because AD Skip Bertman has become nothing more than a greedy politican who cannot say no to money. Why would LSU ever think of playing Arkansas on a friday afternoon?" Would anyone like to confirm or reject this statement? Curious minds want to know.
this sounds like a misinformed young man. the networks (CBS, ESPN, etc.) determine the TV schedule. LSU plays its few non-televised games at night. If CBS picks up the game, its always a day game. The LSU/Ark game has always been played at 2:30 on the day after Thanksgiving. That's not skip's call - it's CBS'. ESPN games are at night. that comment is so off base, it's gotta be coming from some envious barner.
LSU is in a conference. The conference sets the tv contracts, not the individual schools. Skip could probably get us out of playing Arkansas on Friday afternoons, but the question is why should he? If we didn't move the game, we might be left with playing an 11:30 JP game or a 2:30 CBS game on Saturday. There's no guarantee that we'd be playing on ESPN at night. And we have more national exposure on Friday afternoon since there are fewer games. And yes, we need the all the tv revenue we can get. And no, we are not Notre Dame where we can demand our own tv contract. Day games are here to stay unless more networks carry Saturday night games.
LSU was playing Arkansas on Friday afternoons long before Skip became AD. The 1996 game in Little Rock was the first one I can remember.
I like LSU playing arkansas every year on a friday. I know i'll always be able to see it on tv every year.
It can be said it is partly true. The Atheletic Dept does not have to move the games to day games. All games are scheduled at 7 every season except for Arkansas. When a network comes calling with it's time slot then it is up to the department to accept or decline. If declined they would lose a ton of TV revenue. The most can be gained from CBS followed by ESPN then ESPN2 and finally JP Sports. It would be stupid to decline the revenue because LSU has a "tradition" to uphold. Now I'm also sure that the SEC has a say so in that they would encourage the school to move the game for TV because all of that revenue is shared among the member schools and it's where SEC officials get their money for paychecks. Also this has been going on LONG before Bertman took over...way back when Broadhead was the Director is where the first complaints were heard for moving games from night to day.
I'm 99.999999% sure that's false. There are some provisions in the tv contracts that allow schools to decline moving a game, but for the most part, they have no choice. The contract is between all SEC schools and the networks, not individual schools. There are two examples I can think of when a school can decline. (1) Schools can't be forced to move a game from the original date, like to a Thursday or Friday. (2) There is a limit of the number of JP games schools have to play. I'm not positive, but I think it's after two JP games, a school can refuse to play on JP again. But when CBS comes calling, you don't have any options.
