Tuesday Night Lights...

This article presents reactions to the shift of college football games from Saturdays to any day of the week, in order to accommodate television coverage. Last week, for the second time this season, ESPN aired games on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. How does it feel to go a month without playing on a Saturday (Louisville)? What's it like to suit up on three Tuesdays (Toledo)? How does it feel to miss two days of school on the road, then arrive back on campus at 5 a.m., sore and bleary-eyed, to be told by your coaches that you'd better make it to all your classes that day if you know what's good for you? To find the answers to these and other questions, we embarked on a four-day, four-game college football odyssey. Nov. 9: Toledo at Northern Illinois. "On the one hand," Northern Illinois student Aaris Berry complains, while tailgating with fellow members of Sigma Alpha Mu, "we've got the university president taking out an ad in the school paper, telling us the team needs us to be at the game. On the other hand we've got professors scheduling quizzes during night classes, making sure we don't go." "A lot of kids are blowing off classes anyway," adds frat brother Marquis Naylor. "I mean, this is Toledo." Tuesday Night Lights, as Chryst sees it, are a means to that end, though not everyone shares his enthusiasm. In a dank stadium hallway after the game, I offer condolences to Novak on his eighth loss to Toledo, then ask him how he feels about playing on this night of the week. "I'm totally against it," he says. "I love the exposure, but I just don't think Tuesday night was meant for college football. We get so entranced by this thinking that it's such a big deal to be on TV, but we're prostituting these kids a little bit." INSETS: Boise for Breakfast;One Foot In the Door.