Here is an indisputable fact – it is much colder at night in September and October in Wisconsin, Ohio and other great lakes states than in Houston and most all of the Gulf coast states. Day games take advantage of solar radiant heat. With sunshine, sitting in the cold and wind is more bearable.
I always thought there would come a time when television oversaturated the sport. Yes, in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s we had TV games. But, we didn’t have every game on TV. When I was a kid, you would have a game on CBS and a game on ABC. I can’t remember if there was one on NBC as we only had 2 stations. Most games were not for teams in our area, we saw a lot of Big 10, Notre Dame, and Army-Navy games. If you wanted to see LSU, you had to actually go see LSU. I listened to many games on the radio.
In the 60’s, more games were available. I mean more Saturday day games and even LSU got on a time or two. The NCAA regulated how many games each team could have on in order to keep a team from getting too much of an advantage. So seeing a team more than once a year was very rare – there are more teams than Saturdays in September through November. Teams only played 10 games and LSU started its season the 2nd or 3rd Saturday in September and they were at night because it is cooler. Comfort of the fans was actually taken into account. Of course at LSU, so were pre and post game parties.
So, now you can take your pick of who you want to see and can watch football almost every night and on Saturdays from 10:00am to midnight. Yeah, I can see why attendance is down.