Friday Night Marist-Penn Game Could Put Pioneer Football League on Linear TV

Yesterday, Penn released its 2025 schedule with one minor change. Their game against Marist now takes place on a Friday night. Although Friday nights are familiar territory for Penn thanks to the Ivy League’s media deal, the weeknight lights could be an unprecedented opportunity for the Marist program.

As part of the Pioneer Football League, the Red Foxes do not have a media contract for their football games. The Red Foxes stream its games on ESPN+ due to its deal with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. The lack of a media deal makes linear television appearances rare.Thus, the Friday night game against Penn provides an opportunity.

Even an appearance on ESPN+ on Friday night gives Marist nearly unprecedented exposure due to the limited competition. However, there is a possibility, albeit a small one that Marist and Penn’s game lands on a linear (traditional TV) network.

While it is likely that ESPN moves the October 11th Cornell-Harvard game to Friday night for the fourth straight season, Marist could receive airtime on ESPNU thanks to the MLB Wild Card. In 2023 and 2024, ESPN reserved air time for the MLB Wild Card series on Friday, October 6 in 2023 and Friday, October 11 in 2024.

When none of ESPN’s televised series went to the full three games in both years, ESPN moved the Cornell-Harvard game to ESPN2. The game received respectable ratings in both years, with 153,000 viewers in 2023 and 312,000 in 2024, the highest rated non-Harvard vs. Yale games since the advent of ESPN’s contract with the Ivy League.

A realistic scenario would see Cornell-Harvard moving to ESPN2 if it’s a Friday night game and then Marist-Penn moving from ESPN+ to ESPNU. Although, viewership numbers would be modest for Marist-Penn it would be the school’s first appearance on a national linear network ever and easily its most viewed game. The best possible scenario is Cornell-Harvard staying on Saturday and Marist-Penn receiving the coveted bump to ESPN2.

Either way, a game on ESPNU or ESPN2 could create the most important non-conference regular season game in Pioneer Football League history. The Pioneer League has played four games against the FBS, but they were streamed on Campus Insiders (2015 San Diego @ San Diego State), streamed by Iowa State’s in-house pay-per-view service, Cyclone.TV (2018 Drake @ Iowa State), or aired on a regional sports network with simulcast on FloSports (2022 New Mexico State-Valpo).* Marist-Penn on ESPNU or ESPN2 would dwarf the exposure of these games.

A linear TV appearance would be a fitting twist for a Marist squad that had an appearance on CBS Sports Network in line when they scheduled Army for this season. Unfortunately, Army joined the AAC last year, forcing the cancelation of this game.

Marist’s first game against Penn is a special opportunity for the school, but the possibility of linear TV limelight could make this a landmark game for the program and the Pioneer Football League.

*All broadcast data for Pioneer Football League FBS games pulled from mattsarzsports.com