Television delivered another shot to the stomach of sports fans, this time Michigan State football fans, on Wednesday when Spartan fans learned that the season opener against Bowling Green during Labor Day Weekend will be played on Saturday at noon rather than Friday night.

A Michigan State spokesperson confirmed with SpartanMag that the Saturday playing date is set. It won’t be changed to Friday.

Playing on Labor Day Friday had become a tradition for Michigan State since 2010. It’s a recent tradition, but one that has been well-received by Spartan fans, and was growing in popularity.

Mark Hollis came up with the idea to play on Friday night of Labor Day Weekend in order to give season ticket holders a chance to attend a Michigan State football game at the outset of the weekend and still have the ability to get away on Saturday for the remainder of the holiday. We could plan for it.

I liked the idea when Hollis introduced it, and grew to love it as Labor Day Weekends played out through the decade. It made for a fun Friday night event at Spartan Stadium (and at Western Michigan when Michigan State took the game on the road in 2015), and it offered a nod of support to in-state tourism. Pure Michigan State.

Playing the game on Saturday pulls some Spartan fans in two directions: Do they visit East Lansing for the first game of the year, or do they join family and friends at a cottage or lake house for one of the biggest, busiest, most important travel weekends of the summer?

Football and Labor Day rarely crossed paths for Michigan State fans for most of the first 100 years of the program’s existence. But the onset of the 12-game schedule has made Labor Day Weekend football an annual reality - and created the question for athletic officials such as Hollis to find the best way to serve fans and fill seats.

When announcing the idea to play on Labor Day Friday in 2010, Hollis envisioned Michigan State fans getting an additional chance to go Up North, or out west to Lake Michigan, or to the sunrise side of the state on Lake Huron, or to an inland lake or river for one last summer weekend prior to the onset of the school year and the end of the vacation travel season.

Not every Spartan fan travels during summer weekends to touristy locales, but many of them do. And Hollis had this portion of his audience in mind when moving the season opener to Friday nights. He also figured it would give him a better chance to fill Spartan Stadium.

When in-state high school football schedules moved their games to Thursday nights for that weekend, again with tourism and travel in mind, it cemented the idea in Hollis’ mind that Friday would be great for Michigan State’s annual season opener.

Hollis’ plan was a good one. Michigan State has drawn more than 70,000 fans for each of its Labor Day Friday night games. Will Michigan State have more than 70,000 for the Saturday noon game against Bowling Green? That could be a challenge. But chair-backs take a back seat to TV sets.

It’s my understanding that Hollis will continue to push for Michigan State to play on Labor Day Friday in the coming years. I wish him well in that goal.

When the Big Ten announced earlier this year that it planned to schedule more Friday night games, MSU’s traditional Labor Day game seemed like an obvious lock as part of the conference’s new venture.

Instead, Michigan State’s game against Bowling Green has been locked in for Saturday, against the wishes of MSU’s athletic director and I presume against the wishes of the vast majority of Michigan State fans.

Television contracts dictated the decision. On Labor Day Friday, two games involving Big Ten games are scheduled to be aired:

* Washington at Rutgers, 8 p.m., on FS1

* Utah State at Wisconsin, 9 p.m., on ESPN.

I understand that the Rutgers and Wisconsin games are intersectional games, which will attract bigger TV audiences than Michigan State vs. Bowling Green. I also understand that the Rutgers and Wisconsin games were cemented for Friday night when MSU was still trying to move the Bowling Green game from Sept. 16 to Labor Day Weekend.

But what about our little pal, the Big Ten Network?

I asked a Michigan State spokesperson what event will be televised on the Big Ten Network during that time slot. We don’t have an answer at this point. But it’s probably not going to be a college football game. All other Big Ten teams are scheduled to play Thursday or Saturday of that weekend - aside from the Rutgers and Wisconsin games. Friday seems to be open, on BTN, at this point.

Presumably, the Big Ten Conference didn’t want a Michigan State vs. Bowling Green game to bite into the ratings of the Big Ten games airing on partner networks FS1 and ESPN on that night. Pure garbage.

But I get it. TV money pays most of the bills for athletic departments. I'm just wondering how much money stood to be lost in advertising sales for the Rutgers and Wisconsin games if MSU played on Friday night, compared to airing the MSU game at noon on Saturday against the Penn State vs. Akron game, and probably at least one other game.

Apparently it was worth it to the conference, over Hollis' lobby.

Other conference games that weekend include Minnesota vs. Buffalo, Maryland vs. Texas, Iowa vs. Wyoming, Nebraska vs. Arkansas State, Illinois vs. Ball State and Northwestern vs. Nevada. Those game are all scheduled for Saturday, aside from the Minnesota game, which is scheduled for Thursday.

If Big Ten slides one of these games to Friday night for BTN, we may need to rally the pitch forks, torches and canoe paddles and march on their Rosemont offices.

THE REST OF IT

The conference announced game times for a few other games involving Michigan State on Wednesday.

The Spartans will play host to Notre Dame at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 23. The game will be broadcast on FOX. It marks the second straight season the two teams will meet in primetime, as MSU defeated the Irish last season at Notre Dame, 36-28. It also marks the third consecutive time MSU and Notre Dame will meet at night in Spartan Stadium (2010, 2012).

MSU’s Homecoming game against Indiana on Saturday, Oct. 21 will begin at either 3:30 or 4 p.m. (TV network to be announced at a later date).

The Oct. 28 game at Northwestern will be televised on either ESPN or ESPN2; the game time will be announced at a later date.