The sound of a marching band swirls in the evening air as neighbors and classmates, friends and family all stream toward beckoning stadium lights.

They are drawn together in ritual by high school football, for this is Ohio, leaves are beginning to fall, and it’s Friday night.

“Football Friday night is what the local communities like to do,” Upper Arlington coach Joel Cutler said. “It’s a social gathering. It’s just a constant pouring out from communities locally, and it’s not just football teams.

“For us, it encompasses our entire community: our band, our cheerleaders and our youth. We’d love to keep it that way.”

Traditionalists, however, are seeing Friday night becoming yet another night for college football.

Although that trend has grown for two decades, there has been some uproar this year in Ohio and throughout the Midwest because the Big Ten — for the first time — scheduled five Friday night games this season, including Purdue hosting Ohio University on Friday night.

“We are quite upset at the Big Ten,” said Tim Stried, director of communications for the Ohio High School Athletic Association. “We are very disappointed that the Big Ten would play games on Friday night.”

The Big Ten, with full support from member Ohio State University, announced in November that it would play six games on Friday nights for six seasons beginning this year as part of the conference’s six-year, $2.64 billion broadcasting deal with Fox, ESPN and CBS.

Criticism followed, and the Big Ten chose to cut back to five Friday night games this season. Ohio State is not scheduled to play on Friday.

“I think it’s fair to say there’s been pushback,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said at the conference’s media days in July.

Besides Purdue versus Ohio tonight, Wisconsin and Rutgers each hosted nonconference games last Friday. Illinois plays at South Florida next Friday, and the Illini will host Nebraska on Sept. 29.

Iowa plays at Nebraska on Friday, Nov. 24, the day after Thanksgiving, as they have for each of the previous six seasons. But the game kicks off at 3 p.m.

At the time of the Big Ten’s initial announcement, coaches Jim Harbaugh of Michigan and James Franklin of Penn State said their teams would not play on Fridays, though Penn State said it would consider playing on the day after Thanksgiving.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said then that the Buckeyes would host a Friday night game once every three years. Now, OSU’s stance is softening.

“We don’t think Ohio State is a program that will ultimately play on Friday night,” Smith said. “We’re more valuable on a Saturday for our television partners. We don’t need to play on a Friday night.”

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So will the Buckeyes ever play a Friday game?

“I don’t anticipate it,” Smith said. “If you’re running a network, would you put us on Friday night or Saturday? … Friday night is not our world.”

Still, Ohio State remains in favor of Big Ten games being played on Fridays despite opposition from the OHSAA and many high school and college coaches. Smith said the conference’s 14 members unanimously approved the idea when initially polled.

“(OSU’s support) really wasn’t for us as it was for others in our league,” Smith said. “I supported that, and I still support that. I’m disappointed that others who voted for it have come out publicly against it. But we all voted for it. I’m going to stand behind our vote. That’s for the betterment of the league.”

Northwestern originally was scheduled for two Friday night games this season, but the school lobbied the Big Ten and had both moved to Saturdays: Wildcats’ home games against Maryland on Oct. 14 and Michigan State on Oct. 28.

Harbaugh and Franklin weren’t the only principals to voice their displeasure about playing on Fridays.

“I think that’s a special night,” Indiana coach Tom Allen said. “I don’t like playing (college) games on Friday night. I think that’s high school night.”

In January, Iowa state representative Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines, introduced legislation that would ban all Iowa Board of Regents universities from playing football on Friday nights.

Officials from several Midwestern state high school associations met for two hours in May with the 14 Big Ten athletic directors at conference headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois. The OHSAA was not present, but Stried said the organization made its stance known.

Last month, the National Federation of State High School Associations adopted a resolution that urged college and NFL teams to not schedule games on Fridays. “The value of tradition cannot be overstated,” said NFHS executive director Bob Gardner.

In the face of such criticism, Delany said he expects that in the future the Big Ten will play only two Friday games a season after Labor Day, with all others part of that holiday weekend.

The Big Ten is one of eight Division I conferences in Football Bowl Subdivision playing on Friday night this season. Defending national champion Clemson, Florida State and Southern California are among 59 schools playing on a Friday.

In Ohio, only Ohio University and Cincinnati are playing Friday games this season.

Yet even without the Buckeyes, Stried said the Big Ten’s new scheduling policy forces fans to make choices on Friday, a night when Ohio plays about 350 high school games each week of the regular season.

“To go against the high school fans is not right,” Stried said. “The colleges should stick to playing on Saturday, leave high school Friday night alone, and support high schools playing on Friday night.”

tjones@dispatch.com

@Todd_Jones