Unbridled pessimism about the prospect of playing college football in the fall of 2020 has become fatalistic.
Take a deep breath and start to get comfortable with the idea that there is virtually no chance of playing college football in any recognizable way this fall. Start digesting the notion that the next time we watch a college football game it could be in more than 13 months, as the sport remains the most unlikely of all major sports to execute a successful comeback. Consider any aspect of college football before Zero Week 2021 as a bonus, an unlikely gift from the football gods.
With MLS battling an alleged bubble, Major League Baseball officials thwarted the testing part of his comeback and an increasing amount of pessimism about the possibility of an NFL season, only a medical miracle can save college football. this autumn.
“Right now, I don’t see a way in today’s environment of how we play,” said a Power Five athletic director. “I’m sure we’ll go back to what we all think is normal, but it may be a year before that happens.”
Here’s the cruel truth about how college football leaders approached football this fall: The entirety of their comeback plan was based on hope. I hope COVID-19 disappears. I hope that university campuses are not a Petri dish for the virus. I hope that they can find a way to practice a contact sport in a moment of obligatory social distancing. I am hoping for a shot to keep players healthy and full seats.
A strategy of hope is not a great strategy, and half a dozen coaches and officials told Yahoo Sports this weekend that hope is being defeated. It’s all on the minds of many athletic coaches and directors, as the sport will continue to push for time until the inevitable happens.
“Ultimately, no one plays soccer in the fall,” said a senior university official. “It is just a question of how it develops. As soon as one of the ‘autonomy five’ or Power Five conferences makes a decision, that will end it. ”
It looks like there will be no college football in the fall. (AP Photo / Gerald Herbert)
With more than 70,000 positive coronavirus tests in the United States setting a one-day record this weekend, outbreaks on college campuses across the country, and spikes in cases like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, the pathway to playing college football safely it is simply unsustainable.
College football remains a loser of four touchdowns, thanks to individual campuses, academic requirements, and the inability to take 13,000 FBS players and put them in a bubble. If the NBA’s ability to play in a bubble that is reportedly costing $ 150 million is considered dim, the chances of college football being played in some recognizable way in the fall are similar to trying to keep a candle burning while walking 10 miles in a hurricane .
The most interesting development on the calls this weekend was the rampant increase in pessimism in NFL circles about the season, as there are increasing obstacles for that league to play soccer this fall.
A senior NFL team official noted that players with guaranteed money would be owed all their wages if a regular-season game is played: “The NFL is hell-bent on playing, but I don’t know how the functionality works – about the basis of the health risks and the financial structure. It is difficult to see how everything will happen. ”
The best way to see the Pac-12 and Big Ten decisions is not through their “health and safety” talking points. They are best viewed as inevitable chronological steps that will unfold.
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Status quo (SEC, Big 12 and ACC are here).
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Game conference with the ability to delay (The Big Ten and Pac-12, which will soon have company).
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The Spring (This is gaining conversation, but detractors remain.)
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Cancel (More people are talking about this than fans want to know).
Those are the basic tenets of what could happen, as despair over some form of television inventory will allow for creativity.
“What I have learned is that it is not all or nothing,” said one television executive. “It will be going back, going back, and maybe playing four or six games in the late fall. So maybe you decide to go back for another six in the spring. There are plenty of possibilities on the spectrum to start a season. People think it is a binary situation, inside or outside. More than ever due to the money involved, they will do their best to participate in 10 soccer games between now and next September. That has been reached.
The Pac-12 and Big Ten that will go to conference-only models will likely be remembered in the coming months, such as the day in March when the NCAA announced that there would be no fans at the NCAA tournament. It was a great story for a day, and then it was forgotten as the subsequent news cycles progressed.
College coaches are caught somewhere between bewildered and exasperated. They have to motivate staff and juggle unprecedented logistics to get their players to campus safely and stay COVID-19 free. However, they do so knowing that they are preparing for a season that is not happening.
“I hope I’m wrong, but I think canceling the season is an inevitable conclusion,” a Power Five coach told Yahoo Sports on Sunday.
The concern among the coaches remains the same: Are we really going to keep moving forward with the season and wait until there is a player hooked up to a fan in an ICU and it becomes Rudy Gobert’s closing moment of the sport? Fortunately so far, from Clemson to Texas and North Carolina, among whom we know, there have been no known hospitalizations among college football players who have tested positive. But coaches remain concerned that players with pre-existing conditions like sickle cell trait may be at higher risk.
“I shudder when I hear administrators say that the health and safety of student-athletes is first and foremost,” said a Power Five coach. “No, it’s not. If it were, you would have kicked the season by now.”
The next strategy for Big 12, SEC and ACC appears to be to eventually follow Big Ten and SEC and keep pushing things back until a path is available to play. Another Power Five coach noted that while perpetually delaying a season is a good strategy in a conference room boardroom, it’s actually more difficult.
“The concept of delaying or delaying things makes sense from the conference office point of view,” said the coach. “However, for coaches, keeping a group of 100 to 130 young men between the ages of 18 and 22 focused and not falling victim to the vices of normal college kids is not realistic in any way. Our opportunity to keep our cohort group healthy becomes more difficult over time, not easier. ”
Conversations are going on in the training space about what will happen to players without games in the fall. Will there be some form of summer camp? Will schools keep players on campus? Are players safer on campus than at home?
In athletic departments, conversations have intensified about ways to figure out how to overcome the tens of millions in monetary losses that would accompany any soccer season. One Power Five AD estimated that $ 60 million in lost revenue would be a safe number for a Top 20 athletic department. Another university official estimated that at least 80 percent of the revenue would not come.
An industry source summed it up this way: “As presidents and ADs face the reality that football can’t be played this fall, they are thinking more about how to fill the economic gap without decimating their sports departments. . Depending on university and state rules, for some, it can be done through loans, either directly to the school or through the conference. There is more discussion on the financial side as the game piece gets dimmer. ”
A financial calculation for athletic departments is coming up. As a prominent athletic director, he has laughed at the apparently arbitrary budget cuts and salary cuts that schools have announced. “What is so strange to me is that schools cut the budget by 7% to 5%,” said the sports director. What world are you living in? Forget if you lose all your football income. Even if you go down to eight games, you won’t get a 7 percent budget cut. ”
While college football is a multi-billion dollar industry, higher education is a multi-billion dollar industry. Another Power Five coach outlined his responsibility to the school by saying that the team that can return to campus and operate gives the university hope that it can achieve the return of students.
“Our school is opening,” said the coach. “They are not closing. We are preparing and helping our university and our entire psyche in terms of ‘You can do this’. I see it more not only in soccer, but also in giving colleges and universities the opportunity to see if they can overcome this. It is more than just football. Can a university open up and try to solve this?
The spring option still has some support, but it will only be after all options for playing in the fall are exhausted. Those options are shrinking day by day, as the hope strategy that defines the college football plan for the season is predictably crumbling. Hope is free, and university officials get what they paid for.
“What is beginning to take hold for us,” said a senior official at a Power Five school. “We have been talking about this as a problem for a year. I’m not sure it’s a one-year problem anymore. For me, we’re more likely to be in the same situation next year than playing college football in the fall. “
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