The Weird Law That Keeps the NFL Off (Most) Friday Nights
An antiquated law gives high school and college football first dibs on Fridays and Saturdays.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! No lollygagging at work this week—no one wants to be office version of the guy who gets doubled off on a fumbled pop-up to home plate.
Let's talk about Friday night lights—not the show, or the movie, but the lack of them at NFL stadiums. Why can't the NFL play on most Fridays? Blame Congress. After that, we'll hit some sports betting news and close with a quick trip to the A's weird ballpark.
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- Imagine being 26 wins away from the NFL wins record for head coaches and leaving for a college gig just to get stomped by an unranked team.
- Bipartisan bill introduced to elevate the State Department's "Sports Diplomacy Division" (which I bet you didn't know existed) to an Office of Sports Diplomacy with at least three additional staff.
- For casual bettors and professional gamblers, President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act has a new "steep tax penalty."
- FBI releases more documents about Pete Rose.
- Mark Teixeira doesn't play in Texas anymore, but he's going to run for Congress there (as a Republican).
- If you quit your job to golf full-time, maybe you can go from mortgage loan officer to Ryder Cup in four years like Ben Griffin did.
- Elsewhere in Reason: "Brandon Johnson's Chicago Is a Preview of Zohran Mamdani's New York"
- Just another reason we need the Pentagon to pass an audit:
Wait, then does that mean that we all paid Tarleton State $250,000 to beat Army? https://t.co/kKz8KGRqui
— Old Row Sports (@OldRowSports) August 30, 2025
Friday Night Lights
Who put Congress in charge of the nation's TV schedule?
The NFL has a bit of a weird Friday schedule this season. The Chiefs play the Chargers on Friday night this week, and in November the Bears play the Eagles on Black Friday at 3 p.m. The quirky schedule is a result of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which (among many other things) basically keeps the NFL from playing most Fridays. But it only applies from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December (which explains those late-season Saturdays with a smattering of regular season games), and it only applies on Fridays after 6 p.m. (hence the afternoon start on Black Friday). Unless the NFL moves to start Labor Day weekend, you can say goodbye to the week one Friday night game until 2029, the next time the first Friday of September falls after Labor Day.
The regulation is a bit weird, isn't it? The idea was to protect college and high school football from getting overwhelmed by the NFL's popularity. But Congress doesn't keep the NBA from playing on Saturdays just because college basketball teams also play that day. Nor does Congress force MLB games to start after 7 p.m. so that kids can get home from Little League practice before first pitch. Congress doesn't ban broadcasters from showing soccer until 2 p.m. on weekends just so no one's distracted by Liverpool until after all the eight-year-olds on the West Coast have had their post-game oranges.
And yet, college basketball thrives even though it's always competing for attention with the NBA—no one needs to tell the Lakers to take a backseat during March Madness. The NFL might be a behemoth, but so is college football (and as far as high school sports go, so is high school football).
College football is big enough to compete with the NFL. In the modern world, with our abundance of screens, it's easy enough to go watch the high school team on Friday night and keep tabs on the first half of the NFL game at the same time. The NFL should be free to schedule Friday and Saturday games whenever it believes fans would watch them—just as every other professional league is allowed to do.
I'll Venmo You
Did you know the free market can solve problems without government regulation being required?
One of the latest examples in sports comes courtesy of Venmo, the simple mobile payment app. The problem is that (stupid) bettors who lost were finding on Venmo the players who let them down and sending them requests for the money they lost. (Betting is great, but if you lose money on a bet, that's on you.)
Now Venmo and the NCAA have announced a partnership to limit that kind of harassment. The app launched a hotline for athletes where they can report abuse and harassment. Plus, Venmo has a team that will monitor games for events that might trigger a surge in unwanted requests. So if a kicker misses a last-second field goal, Venmo might "help mitigate an influx of requests based on game performance and work directly with them [the athlete] to implement additional security measures as needed," their announcement says.
The legalization of sports betting has led to a bunch of media stories about athletes getting harassed by people over their missed bets—and led to calls for banning prop bets. But assholes harassing athletes (professional and collegiate) online have been around since athletes got on social media with the rest of us. The NCAA says 20 percent of online harassment of college basketball and football players is related to betting—which sucks, but it's a good reminder that restricting sports betting isn't going to do anything about the other 80 percent of harassment.
It's great that Venmo is putting resources toward this. It shows that not every problem requires a government regulation to fix it—and it shows how the bad actors ruining sports betting for the rest of us can be mitigated without undoing legalization.
Major League, But Smaller
Sutter Health Park, home of the Sacramento A's for at least three seasons, is not a must-see ballpark. But it's also a park where you can sit really close to Major League action for not very much money. For that reason alone, I recommend trying to get out there to see your team before the A's move on.
The park has the look, feel, and amenities of a Minor League ballpark because it is one. I was baffled that players have to trot out through the outfield to the locker room and batting cages. The off-field fan experience is just fine (the bacon wrapped hot dog and pastrami dog are nothing to write home about). But, as I write this, you can get two tickets right next to the Red Sox dugout for next Tuesday's game for $65 each. It'd be roughly twice as much for similar seats at Fenway Park the following Tuesday when the A's are in Boston. So if you want to get up close and personal to see your team's version of Tarik Skubal throwing 12 strikeouts or Riley Greene hitting a bomb over the batter's eye, make your way to Sacramento. (When you're not watching baseball, go to the California State Railroad Museum, but the California Museum is a skip.)
Lastly, congratulations to my brother David, who was in Sacramento finishing his journey to see the Tigers play in every MLB ballpark. A huge thank you to the Tigers organization for having us and our dad on the field for batting practice, and for interviewing David on the pregame show.
Replay of the Week
Sorry not sorry, Notre Dame fans.
All the replay angles of C.J. Daniels' one-handed catch ????
Still in disbelief ???? pic.twitter.com/Phb6J0YFYR
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 1, 2025
That's all for this week. I usually make a joke here about some obscure game I don't actually care about, but I'm legitimately interested in this one! Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, the U.S. vs. Samoa in the Women's Rugby World Cup: Saturday 8:30 a.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+.
