Ohio State Football: Playing night games in November shouldn’t matter

The Ohio State football program will play one of the latest night games they’ve ever played at home this season when they take on Michigan State later this year. The 7:30 pm kickoff will be on November 11th. Previously, Ohio State pushed back on hosting November night games.

In fact, the entire Big Ten conference doesn’t like to play night games that late in the season at home. Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State usually just outright refuse to do so. Ohio State only agreed to do it now to keep the conference from losing more money from the TV deal debacle.

Why is it such a big deal? Why doesn’t the Ohio State football program want to play night games in November? It remains a mystery. Gene Smith has said before that it’s because the stadium isn’t made to be winterized and that they can’t host games when it gets too cold.

First of all, that’s nonsense. The stadium is perfectly fine to have people there when it’s cold. Most games against TTUN are cold so that’s an awful excuse. Also, the football program brings in ridiculous amounts of money every year. Use some of that money to winterize the stadium.

Smith also likes to claim that it’s a player safety issue and that the ground gets too hard when it gets cold. It’s interesting that he didn’t think about player safety when he put dangerous artificial turf into the Shoe 15 years ago. Player safety didn’t seem to bother him then.

The bottom line is that it shouldn’t be such a big deal for the Buckeyes to host primetime games later in the year. There is no logical reason why they can’t do it. It shouldn’t be big news when they do either. It should be normal.