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.

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+.

Comments

[Minadin]

This is fine. I don't want the NFL getting in the way of my college ball.

[mad.casual]

Between Belicheck, Sanders, and my local HS coach, it kinda looks like Congress made the right call.

Not sure I'll even watch Arch Manning once he takes Dak Prescott's job.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Great. Couple of supposed-libertarian commenters who think the end justifies the means.

[mad.casual]

First, Stupid, I'm going to need to see the receipts as to how the tax-exempt NFL playing in majority public stadiums is, aside from consolidated TV/Streaming viewers, categorically distinct from land-grant schools playing in student-loan-financed stadiums is categorically distinct than HS students opting to play in publicly financed HS stadiums. I could see how all of it is approximately equally orthogonal to libertarianism, but from anything except a retarded libertarian perspective there is no clear "The NFL/College Football/HS Football is privately funded while HS Football/College Football/NFL is not."

Second, in light of the above, I didn't say any ends justified any means, I just pointed out that they prioritized the most competitive, watchable, accessible, non-Union, most volunteer organizations above the others.

If you want to opt out of paying for public HS and associated athletics, that's fine. I'm not opposed. But just because you want to watch male cheerleaders hanging brains for the Vikings doesn't mean everyone else in Minnesota should be subsidizing the stadium for them to dance in.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Yay, big government spending my tax money because you approve of the end result. Is that your definition of libertarian, or even good government?

[Roberta]

But the law doesn't apply to pros playing the game, or even to the proceedings being transmitted by other means, only to the event's being broadcast over the air. And then only because the constitutionality of the provision hasn't been litigated, same as the cigaret companies decided not to challenge their ad ban.

And I don't think there's any water in that bathtub the lady's in in the ad at the bottom.

[Vernon Depner]

Football fans themselves would object to broadcasting pro games on Fridays. They wouldn't want to offend their own customers. FRIDAZE IS FER HI SKOOL!

[mad.casual]

The NFL is already the largest sports league in the world while the others have the "Friday Night advantage". The idea that if we repeal the law the NFL is going to get bigger, or not, or crowd out HS or college football or not, is a non-sequitur.

It's not even the raw milk debate where some guy goes over to his neighborhood dairy and tries to buy some milk. It's 3 separate markets created and/or propped up by government largess. It's like saying the Cowboys are more libertarian than the Chiefs because their quarterback gets paid less.

[BigT]

"It's 3 separate markets created and/or propped up by government largess."
Not even wrong. The markets overlap a great deal. While the moms and cheerleader parents may not watch college on Saturday, most men follow HS, college, and pro football. HS and college football bring in much-needed ca$h to fund other athletics at the schools, so not completely funded by government largesse either.

Most importantly, if the NFL broadcasts on Friday and Saturday they would be killing their minor league talent development system. Many HSs have dropped football because it is expensive to operate, and many more certainly would push kids to - heaven forbid - soccer which is cheaper to run but brings in nada. The NFL would be remarkably stupid to infringe on Friday and Saturday.....but that's not impossible.

[mad.casual]

"It's 3 separate markets created and/or propped up by government largess."
Not even wrong.

Separate markets within the same command economy : separate divisions with in the same corporation :: tomato : tomahto

Point is, the NFL is massive and massively popular. The law isn't contested not because the NFL couldn't win, they've won other legal battles. It's uncontested because it's a fight they don't want to pick, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And libertarians fighting it on their behalf come across a lot like Karens and Cat Ladies who know better than either NFL fans, College football fans, or the NFL itself as to how things ought to run (insert clip of Remy's parody in a trash-filled tent city where he's wiping cheeto dust on his shirt while declaring "... and *that's* how you run a global economy!")

[Zeb]

Is it really so hard just to accept "congress has no business legislating here" without yet another excessively wordy rant? The NFL and their relationship to the cities and states they play in is irrelevant. And government sticking to it's proper role and not interfering in things that they have no business interfering in seems like a pretty core libertarian thing to me. It's OK to comment on things even if they don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

[mad.casual]

Is it OK if I point out that the NFL is already worth $17B and enjoys tax exemptions well beyond any loss of Friday Night broadcast privileges or is it not OK to have the opinion that "granting" the NFL Friday Night broadcasting is libertarian lipstick on a pig?

If Stupid wanted to express an opinion about why Coach Prime Time or Dak Prescott isn't an embarrassment, he could've expressed that opinion. Instead, he chose to act like a self-righteous libertarian dipshit who's certain his pig is the prettiest.

[Chumby]

Sportsball is the opiate of the fat masses.

[mad.casual]

That's what I would expect someone losing to the transgender chicks in the open division to say. Nobody says their pastime is for losers because they're tired of all the winning.

[Chumby]

The losers are the fatties sitting at home watching (or paying to attend!) the sportsball events.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Yeppers. Something pathetic about watching others play instead of playing yourself. Find some friends, get outside, enjoy the game itself, instead of rooting for millionaire employees of billionaires who change employment at the drop of a hat.

[mad.casual]

Per your own retardation, nothing says "Libertarian" or "plotting to take over the world and leave people alone" like disapproving of how private individuals spend money, employees making money, billionaires hiring millionaire employees, which employees people can and can't hire...

Again, I can go for the idea that sports is orthogonal to libertarianism, but the idea that the NFL is more libertarian or capitalist than college or HS sports isn't even wrong.

[mad.casual]

Are they sitting at your home? Most of the ones I know are former athletes themselves, out coaching their kids, out running around all weekend and catch games on the radio or on their phone while doing something else.

This sounds like a you problem cat lady.

[Chumby]

The ratings of NCAA oblong sportsball and NFL sportsball are less than number of people outside coaching their kids in Pop Warner sportsball?

Sportsball is not viewed in my home.

[I, Woodchipper]

Imagine going back in time and telling our founding fathers "some day the government will control which days you can play certain games"

[mad.casual]

First you'd have to explain that there's a public education system that supports local sports. Then you'd have to explain that there's a quasi-private post-secondary education system that nominally does the same. *Then* you'd have to explain that there's a private, tax-exempt transnational sports league composed of corporations that profit off of public facilities to the tune of billions.

The idea that the people who rationalized the 3/5ths compromise would or wouldn't be OK with steps 1-976, but step 977 would be clearly too far, isn't even comedically bad.

[Zeb]

But 977 wrongs don't make a right.

I agree this is way low on the list of things to care about. But it is a silly law and probably unconstitutional.

[mad.casual]

But 977 wrongs don't make a right.

976 wrongs don't make a right either and 976 > 1. You might say "perfect as enemy of good" but what we've got isn't clearly or exactly bad or good from a libertarian standpoint and nobody's really contesting that. Nobody's going to jail or getting shot for broadcasting NFL games on a Friday night. The reason it goes unchallenged is because the NFL gets all kind of other breaks and it's not worth offsetting the potential losses and the other programs act as cultural conditioning and feeder programs.

This is even dumber than the raw milk debate. It would be like if the purchaser of the raw milk were only buying because he was told to in (public) school and if the dairy farmer were a 501c3 employee working on a dairy built by the local city.

$17B and approximately 50% of the US population in viewership, more than any other professional seasonal sport in the world. Exactly how big do you think the NFL needs or would or should get before libertarians say, "OK, *now* Congress isn't holding them back."?

How much of your taxes do you think you get back if the NFL is allowed to broadcast on Friday Nights? How much does federal spending drop?

This is even dumber than the 'economist to make a moral decision' argument. This is like arguing that the Chiefs are a less libertarian team than the Cowboys because the quarterback gets paid more. I'm fine arguing better or worse quarterback or better or worse value (which was the comment I made), but the idea that dollars spent, or not, in the NFL are somehow more libertarian than dollars spent, or not, on college or HS football, without any receipts, is beyond dumb.

[Vernon Depner]

Congress? Didn't the Friday Night law come from God? I'm pretty sure it's in the Bible.

[Minadin]

I was certain it came from Stargate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-FrPxQtqEQ