MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- The college football itinerary used to be a lot different because most team's kickoff schedules were the same: Saturday, at 1:30 p.m., on real grass.

From Chestnut Hill, Mass., down to Auburn, Ala., across to Austin, Texas, up to Pullman, Wash., and just about everywhere a game was played in between, those variables remained constant.

Now though -- largely because of the success of weeknight games on ESPN platforms -- you never know what you're going to get.

To that end, consider this: Including the game West Virginia plays tonight at South Florida, the Mountaineers also will play two more games on Fridays -- at Cincinnati and at home against Pitt -- and have already defeated Colorado on a Thursday night (Oct. 1) at Mountaineer Field.

The upcoming Friday night game Nov. 13 between West Virginia and host Cincinnati has a chance to be the Big East's premier game this season.

Or, as Joe Tessitore -- who is the play-by-play broadcaster for ESPN2 coverage of Friday night games -- put it: "Potentially, looking at everything, it might end up being the biggest game in the country that week."

You would think that an old-fashioned, tradition-loving coach such as West Virginia's Bill Stewart would hate the direction the scheduling has taken.

Here is Stewart's response:

"Thursday and Friday night [college] football, to me, is exactly what 'Monday Night Football' is [to the NFL]. You are the game on television."

Take tonight's ESPN2 telecast, or earlier this season when the Mountaineers played at home against Colorado on ESPN, for example. Whether you are in a tavern in Danville, Calif., or your living room in Danville, Ky., the game is available on your TV screen without having to buy a premium cable package -- and with no other college game on at the time.

That much isn't lost on Tessitore, who will call tonight's West Virginia-South Florida game.

"I am so conscious of when we are doing a game in an unopposed window, and that is the case with the Thursday and Friday games," Tessitore said. "When you know you have all the eyeballs of the sport on you, there is a heightened sense of awareness as to what you are doing."

A game such as tonight's -- and even more so for a Thursday night home game -- provides a measure of free advertising for West Virginia University and, in a football sense, a vast-reaching recruiting tool.

"Colossal for our program," Stewart said of the recruiting impact. "I would not want to do it every week, but it has been very, very advantageous."

Mountaineers left tackle Don Barclay also understands the impact.

"It's not a 'football night' sometimes when they put these games on and when we have to play them," Barclay said. "But if you're a football fan, you are definitely going to watch."

When Tavon Austin, a freshman kick returner and slot receiver for West Virginia, was in high school last year in Baltimore and West Virginia played on a Thursday night, it limited his viewing choices -- which, he felt, was a good thing.

Now, when he plays in such games, Austin believes that maybe there are more sets of eyes on him than when he runs out there for those Saturday games.

"When you play a game on Saturday, there's a lot of other games on, and people flip around the channels," Austin said. "Thursday or Friday night games, there's no other game to flip to. It's like, as a player, you know everybody's watching you. And when you were a recruit in high school, that was the game you were watching."

There is one hang up -- a major one as far as Stewart sees it. At his media conference Tuesday, Stewart raved about Thursday games -- both home and away -- seemed equally excited about away Friday games and tepid on any Wednesday games, but one thing he vehemently opposed was a Friday night home game.

"The only thing I don't like about Friday night games is [the interference with] high school football," Stewart said. "I'm old school. I can't help it, I am what I am, I am who I am. And I don't ever hope we [have a Friday night game] in Morgantown."

Stewart isn't the only one who feels that way.

Pitt's athletic director, Steve Pederson, and its football coach, Dave Wannstedt, have gone on record in saying they wouldn't want to play a home game on a Friday night. They and Stewart contend that Friday nights, particularly in the football-rich tri-state region, should remain reserved for high school football.

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