Last month I was talking with Pete Christy at KCBD in Lubbock about games being moved to Thursdays, primarily due to ref shortages. By the way, if y'all have social media, and don't already follow Pete, go give him a like/follow. He does a LOT of six-man football coverage, especially on Facebook and X, and has been helpful to me with scores on numerous occasions. I'll post his social media links at the bottom of this topic.
Anyways, back to games being moved to Thursday nights, or just away from Friday. It seems like a hot topic every year, and it would seem that more and more games seem to be moving to Thursday nights every year. We mentioned how it'd be nice to be able to find out how many more games, each year, that is. So, being the statistical dork that I am, I spent some time today coding in something to try to figure it out.
Before I share the findings, it is important to note that this data is based off of how the games were reported to me by coaches, fans, players, etc and input into the schedule. Now, that said, any time there's a game scheduled for Friday and I get the score reported on Thursday, I do go ahead and take the time to update it in the schedule too just so the historical records are as up-to-date as possible. Also, I'm not sure how accurate the 2020 data is. That was the year before I took over the site and I'm not sure what @granger's process was for fixing games on game day. That was also covid year so I'm sure things were extremely crazy. I probably should've just skipped that year too but, oh well, the data is already here. Also, unfortunately, I'm unable to find a backup that includes the 2021 game data with dates/times so I'll just skip that one for now.
Now on to the meat of this thing...
So, from the data I have, there has not really been an increase in the amount of non-Friday games, at least not in six-man football. Looks to me like it's been holding fairly steady with less than 1% separating any given year the last three years, which is quite surprising to me personally. I truly expected to see a fairly dramatic increase just over the last few years.
We'll see what happens this year and, once it's complete, I'll come back and update this table with the 2025 data following the season.
Check out Pete Christy on Facebook - X - Instagram
Anyways, back to games being moved to Thursday nights, or just away from Friday. It seems like a hot topic every year, and it would seem that more and more games seem to be moving to Thursday nights every year. We mentioned how it'd be nice to be able to find out how many more games, each year, that is. So, being the statistical dork that I am, I spent some time today coding in something to try to figure it out.
Before I share the findings, it is important to note that this data is based off of how the games were reported to me by coaches, fans, players, etc and input into the schedule. Now, that said, any time there's a game scheduled for Friday and I get the score reported on Thursday, I do go ahead and take the time to update it in the schedule too just so the historical records are as up-to-date as possible. Also, I'm not sure how accurate the 2020 data is. That was the year before I took over the site and I'm not sure what @granger's process was for fixing games on game day. That was also covid year so I'm sure things were extremely crazy. I probably should've just skipped that year too but, oh well, the data is already here. Also, unfortunately, I'm unable to find a backup that includes the 2021 game data with dates/times so I'll just skip that one for now.
Now on to the meat of this thing...
| Year | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | %Non-Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 52 | 863 | 43 | 9.97% |
| 2022 | 217 | 998 | 94 | 23.76% |
| 2023 | 217 | 1043 | 93 | 22.91% |
| 2024 | 220 | 1050 | 102 | 23.47% |
So, from the data I have, there has not really been an increase in the amount of non-Friday games, at least not in six-man football. Looks to me like it's been holding fairly steady with less than 1% separating any given year the last three years, which is quite surprising to me personally. I truly expected to see a fairly dramatic increase just over the last few years.
We'll see what happens this year and, once it's complete, I'll come back and update this table with the 2025 data following the season.
Check out Pete Christy on Facebook - X - Instagram
