Left out in the cold

Was the Glass Bowl half full for kickoff of the Battle of I-75 on Tuesday night?

Or half empty?

Depends on your outlook.

Either way, the question soon became moot.

And, by the end, no matter if you were a Bowling Green fan on top of the world, a Toledo fan who wanted to FIRE EVERYONE, or just a college football enthusiast, I suspect there’s at least one thing on which we can all agree: An all-time rivalry finish playing out before no more than a couple thousand bone-chilled diehards on a snowy weeknight is an indefensible shame.

Thanks, ESPN.

You too, Mid-American Conference.

Way to keep slapping our community in the face.

Sorry, I know you’ve heard us get on our soap box before, but, if there’s one sports hill I’ll defend to the end, it’s that the Toledo-Bowling Green rivalry — a civic celebration that should be the centerpiece of our local sports calendar — belongs on a Saturday afternoon in October.

Tuesday was but the most glaring example of all that we lose when the game is on a frosted weeknight.

On a sun-splashed Saturday, it would have been an all-day party, tailgaters filling the campus and fans filling the stadium.

Just think back to the rivals’ last two afternoon showdowns at the Glass Bowl, in 2016 and ’18, when crowds of 30,147 and 24,685 had the place rocking.

Imagine the back-and-forth roars that would have coursed through the old stadium if Tuesday night’s game — with the teams swapping go-ahead touchdowns in the final minute — were played in that kind of setting.

It would have been awesome.

But, unfortunately, ESPN — and, by extension, the MAC — doesn’t care.

No, what it really cares about is having cut-rate programming for the benefit of the guy who’s gambling on the game in Pocatello, Idaho.

For those of us in northwest Ohio — the fans and taxpayers who underwrite the product on the field in the first place — here’s your crap sandwich.

Even in the haze of joy and gloom late Tuesday night, both coaches could see clearly where our rivalry game belongs.

“It should be on Saturday,” Bowling Green’s Scot Loeffler said.

Loeffler recalled the last time the Falcons hosted Toledo on a Saturday, in 2019, when BG drew a season-high crowd of 19,199 for its upset win.

“I thought it was as cool of a deal as ... we don’t have 100,000 people [at BG or UT], but we’ve got some good stadiums and, when they’re filled, there are great atmospheres,” he said. “I remember coming down I-75 from our hotel that day. It felt like a big-time atmosphere. We have a police escort. We normally don’t need one. We actually needed one. This stadium should be full on a Saturday. It’s good for the community, it’s good for the business owners in both communities, Toledo and Bowling Green. I really, really, really want this game on Saturday.”

Toledo’s Jason Candle agreed.

“Absolutely, 100 percent,” he said. “What kind of crowd would this game have here or down there if it was on a Saturday? ... This game means so much to these communities, and a young person with a family who’s got young kids, tomorrow they have to go to school. I’ve got to tell my own kids they can’t go to the game.”

To be sure, that’s not to take away from the faithful who turned out Tuesday.

By MACtion standards, the crowd was excellent — announced attendance: 20,027 — and the full student section was even better. (Say what you will about Barstool Sports. The scene at its pregame show in Lot 8 was electric, with more than a thousand students providing a backdrop every bit as raucous as you’d see at Ohio State or Michigan for ESPN’s College GameDay.)

But when the best-case scenario for a big rivalry game is a half-full-turned-mostly-empty stadium, that’s too bad.

As much as the nationally televised weeknight games are a net positive for the MAC, you can have too much of a good thing.

And Toledo-BG playing on a Tuesday night in conditions on loan from the North Pole for an audience on ESPNU is Exhibit A.

Don’t tell me about the exposure.

Toledo has already played games this season on Fox, ESPN, ESPNU, ESPN3, FS1, and NFL Network — every channel but C-Span 4. It needed the exposure of ESPNU — the channel to which ESPN has relegated its past three weeknight broadcasts of the Toledo-BG rivalry — like fans needed sunblock Tuesday. (The last rating I found for a weeknight Battle of I-75? In 2017, the ESPNU broadcast registered a 0.1, averaging 174,000 viewers.)

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times — once for roughly every dollar MAC schools receive per year in a way-too-small deal that gives ESPN almost unilateral control over their football schedule.

But it bears repeating for the TV and MAC executives in the back.

The Toledo-Bowling Green game is a public trust, and, if the people who subsidize the programs can’t enjoy the game they most anticipate — or attending it feels like a chore — what’s the point of having a money-losing athletic department at all? (A reminder of how the sausage is made: In the 2020 fiscal year, the Toledo and BG athletic departments received a combined $36.5 million from student fees and university subsidies.)

For his part, new Toledo AD Bryan Blair told us he’s keeping his mind open, including to our solution: The MAC needs to have language in its next TV contract that — with limited exceptions — protects its top rivalries. Its deal with ESPN runs through 2026.

“Those are questions I have for our conference,” he said. “What was proposed previously, what ideas were thrown out there, and what’s possible moving forward to try to preserve some of these rivalries and making sure they always remain special.”

Tuesday’s thriller was more cold, hard evidence.

Toledo-Bowling Green deserves better.

Contact David Briggs at: dbriggs@theblade.com, or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.