Friday night lights? These days high schools flip the switch for Thursday football, too

Anyone who pays even casual attention to high school football has noticed that the traditional "Friday Night Lights" docket of games has changed in recent years, with more games being played on nontraditional football evenings, especially Thursdays and Saturdays.

Those days have always hosted a handful of games, mostly because of field and facility availability, but the growth in the number of football games scheduled on nights other than Friday is also one of the byproducts of a well-publicized shortage of officials that is plaguing high school sports.

Fourteen games across the state are scheduled for Thursday night this week, 11 involving metro-area teams. Seven more games are scheduled for Saturday, four with metro teams.

Many of the games on nontraditional schedules have been mandated by conferences at the request of the various officiating associations that provide game officials.

The Suburban East Conference two years issued a mandate to football programs to schedule at least one home game on a day other than Friday. The conference did the same for basketball, asking schools to schedule at least four games a season on nights other than the traditional Tuesdays and Fridays.