Every professional interviewee wants to be sharp.

So when talking to one of the nation’s best high school coaches, Chris Merritt of Miami Christopher Columbus (who played for Joe Novak at Indiana), it was a surprise to hear his perfect interview ruined.

The culprit – the days of the week.

It wasn’t as if Merritt didn’t know how to pronounce Thursday. And I promised there was no pop quiz on how to spell Wednesday in under three seconds.

No, what gave this former head coach of the European Football League’s Hamburg Blue Devils trouble was what day college football is played on.

“For five days a week [the coach] can be on the practice field in the huddle, but on Friday night for me, or Saturday, oh wait in the MAC maybe Tuesday night, whenever game day is, a coach can’t be in the huddle.”

Merritt was providing a quote on why player leadership is important, but before he could make his perfect statement it was already tainted.

It used to be a natural progression in football. Start on Friday nights, move to Saturday afternoons, and then off to Sundays, with maybe the occasional Monday end cap. But this cycle has been on the way out for a long time.

The main offender destroying the football calendar, college games – mostly mid-major conferences like the MAC.

This year the MAC will have 24 weekday games with 17 of those airing on national television. To give a bit more perspective, MAC teams will participate in 105 games this season. This means almost 23 percent of football games this season will be played sometime between Tuesday and Friday night.

Why the sudden shift to weekday games – the boob tube.

The MAC will have 21 Saturday games air in 2009, not counting bowl games. Of those 21 games, however, only four games will pit conference opponents against each other. The other 17 games will feature a different audience – ones interested in watching Wisconsin , Michigan , Kentucky , Boston College , and so on.

But is it really worth conferences moving around their season schedule so the ESPN family can have something besides six hours of Sportscenter for one night?

Last season, when Ball State and Central Michigan hooked up for a Wednesday night date, the game drew a record 1.6 viewer rating. The over 1.6 million homes tuning in made the game the most watched ever for a Tuesday or Wednesday night.

But to give you an idea of what that means, reruns of Law & Order: SVU bring in a 2.8 weekly rating during the week of June 8, 2009: more people rather watch old episodes of Ice Tea running around New York than see live college football.

Sure, there’s some good in these games. It provides exposure for the conference, earns some money from the t.v. contracts and can help schools with recruiting.

But, there’s a huge downside. Think of the classes these athletes now have to miss not only to play the game, but to travel to and back from the weekday game if it’s on the road.

The games also affect the student fan basis. NIU averaged 19,405 fans per Saturday game last season. If it was a weekday game, however, the numbers of fans dropped to an average of 15,738. From the view in the press box, there was more silver showing in the East stands than bodies.

But hey, maybe I’m only over reacting about changing the traditions. I mean the only real issue here is that coaches and players just have to replace Saturday in their quotes with whatever day we play this week, right?