Panthers,
The idea of this Friday night game is to Draw nation level viewing. With an alumni association of 600k paying members, PSU has the draw they are looking to gain. WADR to Iowa its a regional game at best and could occur in pretty harsh weather conditions.
Obviously this is done for national tv viewing...But the Big 10 isn't the MAC, desperate for the mid-week MACtion on tv...Michigan, OSU, PennSt, Wisconsin are not giving up a home Saturday for a national viewing because they have a national viewing and a sold out stadium no matter what...Illinois right now, averaging on paper 30k attendance a game, in reality sub-20k per game after 3, really needs the exposure...Lets be realistic, maybe if Illinois played Iowa on Friday in November CSN/now NBC sports Chicago might show Illinois high school playoff football games instead of Iowa hs games...