President Donald Trump wants college football to be played this fall.
Trump quote tweeted on Monday afternoon Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and said athletes were working too hard for the 2020 season to cancel or push back. The potential for no college football in the fall has become more real in recent days as the Big Ten could take an announcement this week that it will have no football like other bankrupt sports by 2020.
Less than an hour after his first tweet, Trump repeated his message.
Play College Football!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2020
Earlier Monday night, Trump’s account tweeted a video that adopted the players’ #WeWantToPlay hashtag.
Lawrence tweeted his message late Sunday night following a call from Zoom with other leading college footballers. In the call and the graph, the players expressed their desire to play with improved security measures due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The message also notes that players “eventually” want to form an association for football players. Because players are students of their schools and not staff, they cannot officially unite. The NCAA considered for years amateurs of university athletes because players were unable to earn money from their names or pictures.
Number of college football teams will not play in 2020
About an hour before Trump’s tweet, Old Dominion announced that it would have no sports in the fall. ODU became the 14th school at the top level of college football to say that there would be no football in 2020 and the first school in a conference to announce that it will not be playing independently of its conference. The 12 teams from the Mid-American Conference announced over the weekend that they would not play football and UConn, an independent in football, was the first team to say it did not play.
The Division II and Division III of the NCAA announced last week that they would not hold any sports championships in the fall and more than half of the conferences at the second tier FCS level of college football said they would not be in ‘ the fall will play.
However, those schools and teams do not receive nearly as much attention as those at the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC Power Five conferences. And the move by a Power Five conference to suspend or cancel football in 2020 would be another sign that the coronavirus pandemic has not gone anywhere.
Trump probably understands that. No football in 2020 can be seen as an accusation of the US government’s treatment of the pandemic. Leaders at universities across the country are hoping the football season could be played out as planned when the pandemic disappeared during the summer months. That did not happen. And we may find ourselves without any football in the fall despite the wishes of the president.
