Friday nights used to belong to high school football. Those days are long since in the rear-view mirror as college conferences were seeking non-traditional TV time slots to showcase their teams.
The ACC has made an intentional push into Friday nights, playing 12 games in 2025 and now a league-record 15 games this fall. No. 4 Miami (5-0, 3-0 ACC) has already played on a pair of Fridays, winning at Stanford and Wake Forest in September.
Florida State (3-2, 1-1 ACC) now plays the first of three Friday games, traveling to Louisville (2-3, 1-2) on Friday at 7 p.m. (ESPN).
“It's a great showcase,” FSU coach Mike Norvell said. “I don't love the road, short week games. We got a couple of them this year. We got a great plan to make sure our guys are going to be ready to roll Friday night. But then the benefit of it is the stage, be able to go and be in a very competitive and hostile environment against a great team.”
Norvell said the key for the Seminoles was their 48-hour turnaround from the end of a 38-7 win over Virginia on Saturday. FSU’s coaches held a “correction meeting” on Sunday and had the players lift weights but opted not to practice. While Monday is usually FSU's off day, the Seminoles instead were on the practice field in the morning.
The Seminoles will also play a Friday road game against Pittsburgh on Nov. 13 and finish the regular season with a home matchup against Florida on Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving. Doak Campbell Stadium has a number of classrooms, which makes scheduling a home Friday game logistically impossible unless it’s around a holiday weekend.
FSU, SMU, Louisville and Virginia Tech are among the ACC schools that play three Friday games.
“To do it three times in a year is a lot,” Norvell said. “We came into it understanding some of the things that we have to do creatively with the schedule, make sure we're doing all things, taking care of guys' bodies.”
The Miami-Wake Forest game was ESPN’s highest rated Friday broadcast in 2026 with 2.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen research. FOX has also scheduled Friday games, with Northwestern-Indiana reaching 3.8 million viewers. Missouri-Kansas and Houston-Texas Tech surpassed 3 million viewers.
Those numbers are favorable for leagues like the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 to take slots on Fridays. The other is the quantity of games each week.
“There’s so much compression on Saturday,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said in July. “Everybody can’t play on Saturday anymore.”
FSU’s ratings have been very strong on Fridays. The FSU-Virginia game in September 2025 drew 4.39 million viewers with a peak viewership of 6.9 million, the most watched ESPN Friday game in nearly three decades, according to Nielsen’s research. The FSU-NC State game in Nov. 2025 drew 2.1 million viewers.
Even after two losing seasons, FSU’s ratings in 2026 have been good. More than 4 million viewers watched FSU-SMU, which began late on Labor Day after lightning delays and a power outage. The FSU-Alabama game was watched by 7 million viewers with a peak of 8 million, although that game was also delayed by lightning.
Thanks for reading the Osceola. Subscribe now for 40 percent off to enjoy a full year of coverage of FSU athletics. You’ll also earn a $20 gift card at Alumni Hall.
