Indiana, it’s about time!

Folks in Indiana have been well aware; people in neighboring states, not always. But with most of Indiana refusing to observe Daylight Savings Time, it’s been a curse on football schedule-makers.

For those who don’t know, most of Indiana, the part in the Eastern Time Zone, has not observed Daylight Savings Time, the time between the beginning of April and the end of October in which most of the USA turns its clocks forward one hour. Therefore, games scheduled in Indiana from Weeks 1-9 actually start one hour later to those based in Michigan, Ohio, etc.

Most of the Indiana schools get their schedules right year-in and year-out. They know that if a game starts at 1:30 in Ohio, then they need to list it as 12:30 on their schedule if listing it in Indiana time. But it often confuses opposing schedule-makers, who will list a 1:30 Indiana Time game as 1:30, rather than 2:30, and say “All Times Eastern.”

It even causes headaches on our schedule, since the change in time comes during the football season. We have to manually change the clocks between Week 9 and Week 10, when Indiana comes back into line. It also affects people calling the NCAA’s national office, in Indianapolis.

Thankfully, starting in 2006, this will no longer be an issue. The state’s legislature passed a law restoring Daylight Savings Time in Indiana for the first time since the early 1970s.

We can hardly wait.