It’s unseemly, really.

It flies in the face of tradition, it pits the preps against the collegians, it forces fans to prioritize their loyalties, it’s even making this very newspaper turn cartwheels trying to do on a Friday what it’s always done on Saturday while still trying to do on Friday what it’s always done on Friday.

And you can blame Oklahoma.

It’s Tulsa’s game and the Golden Hurricane needs it more than the Sooners, and the OU brass may well have gone to the Oklahoma coaches association for guidance and, as Bob Stoops said, it may never happen at Owen Field.

Still, blame OU for tonight’s game at Chapman Stadium.

Just don’t blame Stoops, Joe Castiglione or David Boren. Instead, blame Barry Switzer, Wade Walker and Bill Banowsky. Because it was those three men who were football coach, athletic director and university president when OU and Georgia took the NCAA to court to, in a nutshell, deregulate college football.

The decision came down in 1984 and ever since the viewing choices of the college football fan have grown and grown and grown, limited only by the imagination of the broadcasters and the number of channels available.

Thursday night college football came first.

Most other days were soon to follow.

In 2003, Miami of Ohio, with a pretty good quarterback named Ben Roethlisberger, got off to a 7-1 start playing on Saturday. Then it played Bowling Green on a Tuesday (ESPN2), Marshall on a Wednesday (ESPN2), Ohio on a Saturday, Central Florida on a Friday (stunningly, no television), and the MAC Championship game, against Louisville, on a Thursday (ESPN2).

Those games put the MAC on the map.

It was a league that played little defense but a ton of offense. It was great viewing. And none of it ever would have happened if not for OU and Georgia taking the NCAA to court.

Remember all those probations that included “no television.”

Thing of the past, thanks to OU and Georgia.

Because just who did the NCAA think it was telling its member schools how often they could be on television and against whom?