Enjoy tonight’s game, everyone, crouched up on your sofas, sitting on your bar stools, balled up in your collective homes.

For a fan, this is Thursday night football – seen from 400 miles away.

It could be different. If tonight’s game, a 7:30 contest against West Virginia, was played in Syracuse, the comfort of your home could be the camaraderie of the Carrier Dome.

‘Oh, boy,’ center Matt Tarullo said. ‘This feels like it’s a Monday Night Football game for us. There’s gonna be no other games on TV. Everyone is watching us. It feels like it’s all us.’

‘All us,’ as in Tarullo and the rest of the Syracuse football team. The Orange will be there, playing in an atmosphere that just fails to evolve on Saturdays. Few things connect people like weekday night games.

Too bad Syracuse’s game tonight is in Morgantown, W.Va., so fans must watch Thursday night football on the tube, not absorb themselves in its environment. Makes you wonder whether the Carrier Dome could handle some Thursday night football.

Well, tucked away inside SU Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel’s head full of secrets is a plan – he won’t tell us what it is – to bring Thursday night football to Syracuse for the first time ever.

‘We established a committee,’ Crouthamel said, ‘to determine the best way to bring Thursday night football here.’

The committee – established under former Chancellor Buzz Shaw – has met five times and recognized two big problems. One, a Thursday night game would disrupt classes. Two, it would frustrate Syracuse’s already condensed parking areas.

Syracuse’s situation is unique because the Carrier Dome is on campus. Other Big East schools, like West Virginia, are better prepared to deal with a midweek game.

WVU’s Mountaineer Field shares a parking lot with Ruby Memorial Hospital. The hospital schedules few meetings on game days. It forces employees to park at a distant parking lot, and the hospital runs a shuttle throughout the day.

Syracuse’s surrounding parking lots are comparatively miniscule. Its classes would be ongoing as fans flooded (well, trickled into) the Dome.

Because of that, the Big East has requested that ESPN not play Thursday night games at Syracuse. The Thursday night games emerged after ESPN signed a contract with the Big East in 2001.

Soon after, Shaw created the committee to identify the problems Syracuse faced with Thursday night games – and solve them. Crouthamel says resolutions have been discussed. What are they?

‘I’m not gonna get into that,’ Crouthamel said.

So we don’t know what these resolutions are – or even when they’ll take effect. But Thursday night football will come to Syracuse … at some point.

So far Syracuse has escaped Thursday night’s grasp. But in order to live up to its end of the contract with ESPN, Crouthamel wants to find a solution.

Financially, it makes no difference. Syracuse receives the same monetary benefit on the road as it would at home. Academically, Syracuse only misses one day of classes on the road, because it charters its flights.

In preparation, Syracuse is set, too. With no game last weekend, SU started practicing Saturday, two days early, so Monday felt like Wednesday and today feels like Saturday.

‘Thursday is a good day to have this,’ Tarullo said. ‘It’s like the end of the week. People watch Thursday night football, then they’re ready for the weekend.’

Soon, it might reach Syracuse. I left Crouthamel’s office and wished him luck on having the Thursday night games work out.

‘It will,’ Crouthamel said.

For those in Morgantown tonight, enjoy the ambiance. For those in Syracuse, you’ll feel it soon enough.