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The NFL makes its biggest attempt to date to turn Thursday nights into its night — just in time to bury BYU.

'Thursday Night Football' comes to CBS this week, and the Pittsburgh Steelers-Baltimore Ravens game will kick off at 6:25 p.m. MT on Ch. 2 and the NFL Network. The BYU-Houston game is scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m. on ESPN.

College football is popular. But its TV ratings can't compete with pro football. And the NFL is clearly trying to take away a night that has belong to college football since the 1980s.

"When we started the 'Thursday Night Football' package back in 2006, our effort here was to build Thursday night as a football night — an NFL football night," said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

It hasn't worked out as well as the NFL had hoped. Ratings for games that aired on the NFL Network were hampered by problems with distribution for the channel for years, and it the games didn't make as big a splash as they might have on a more established channel.

Enter CBS, which will produce the full slate of Thursday-night games. Eight will air simultaneously on CBS and the NFL Network; the rest on the NFL Network alone.

"What we have seen ... is that there's tremendous demand for more football, and particularly on Thursday night," Goodell said. "And we believe there is an opportunity to build Thursday night."

Quite clearly, the NFL is using CBS to build the franchise and bring viewers to the NFL Network.

"We wanted to take what we had started on the NFL Network, continue to grow the NFL Network, but really create a greater awareness of the NFL on Thursday night in a franchise that we all will be proud of," Goodell said.

CBS is quite content to be used, what with getting what are sure to be eight high-rated, prime-time football games.

It's a win for the NFL. It's a win for CBS.

It's a big loss for college football.

The NFL and college football used to exist side-by-side without a great deal of direct TV competition.

College games were played on Saturday. Pro games were played on Sunday. Both went out of their way to avoid direct competition. The NFL doesn't play regular-season games on Saturday until after the college regular season is over; traditional New Year's Day bowl games are move to Jan. 2 if Jan. 1 falls on a Sunday; etc.

The NFL has telecast Thursday-night games for eight years, but moving them to CBS makes this a whole new ballgame.

For its part, CBS could hardly have gotten more lucky than it did with its Week 1 draw. The Ravens are very much in the news this week, thanks to Ray Rice. That will only boost ratings, like it or not.

And the NFL is presenting an interesting lineup of Thursday-night games — all but one is an intra-division rivalry. Plus, an attempt is being made to involve the entire league.

"Every team in the NFL is going to appear on Thursday night," Goodell said. "That's a great thing for our league, and something that I don't believe any other league can say."

It's not such a great thing for college football. Starting with that Cougars-vs.-Cougars matchup on Thursday night.

Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.