Missouri joins Iowa, Nebraska on Black Friday

As everyone in this region knows, Nebraska and Iowa will play football in Iowa City on Nov. 28 to determine which of the two teams goes to the Big Ten title game with a 12-0 record and which probably sits on the outside of the College Football Playoff at 11-1.

I kid, I kid. (Or do I?)

What we learned Tuesday is the two states will have to share Black Friday with Missouri this year. The Arkansas-Missouri game has been moved up a day to Friday, Nov. 28, and will air on CBS at 1:30 p.m.

This will be the fourth year Nebraska-Iowa has been on Black Friday. The starting time for the ABC game hasn't been announced, but it's been 11 a.m. the first three years.

The date, although an unofficial national holiday since it's the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend, hadn't been a blockbuster one for college football. Arkansas had played LSU on Black Friday. Last year's feature game on that day was Oregon-Oregon State, played at night. That was a dilly, a 36-35 Ducks win.

This year, the Pac-12 gives us Stanford-UCLA and Arizona State-Arizona. Pretty, pretty good. Also, ABC/ESPN will have Virginia-Virginia Tech.

If Nebraska-Iowa is the college Game of the Day, something has gone very right for the Huskers and Hawkeyes.

The least the Big Ten and ABC can hope for is that the Nebraska-Iowa game is compelling enough in the fourth quarter to keep people from switching to Arkansas-Missouri.

By the way, Iowa-Nebraska was second in television ratings last Black Friday:

Rating Homes Time Game Network

3.1 4.96M 2:30 PM Arkansas LSU CBS

2.5 3.98M 12:00 PM Iowa Nebraska ABC

1.4 2.12M 3:30 PM Miami Pittsburgh ABC

1.3 2.18M 7:00 PM Oregon St Oregon FS1

1.1 1.72M 3:30 PM Washington State Washington FOX

0.8 1.22M 9:08 PM* USF UCF ESPN

0.2 325K 12:00 PM SMU Houston ESPN2

0.2 297K 8:14 PM* USF UCF ESPNEWS

0.1 168K 1:30 PM Bowling Green Buffalo ESPNU

0.0 46K 3:00 PM FIU FAU FS1