The probability of the 2020 college football season being played this fall has just entered another level of DEFCON. Call it what you like: a turning point, high alert, Judgment Day.
On Friday, the NCAA Board of Governors is scheduled to consider voting on the cancellation of the fall championships. A source told CBS Sports that this is the only item on the agenda of the NCAA’s highest governing body.
Essentially, Friday could become that go / no go moment for the college football season.
While the vote at this time would not have a direct or immediate impact on FBS, the implications of such a decision are significant, layered, complicated, and perhaps tragic.
While the season is probably not going to go away on Friday, it might soon. Through that board, mostly presidents and chancellors of all NCAA divisions, the association has more influence than ever on college football, a sport for which it has largely lost oversight.
The FBS, particularly the Power Five conferences, has been largely autonomous from the NCAA for years. The NCAA does not organize an FBS championship. That is controlled by the 130 teams, their conferences, their commissioners, ESPN, and the College Football Playoff.
With Friday’s vote, the board could reclaim some of that lost grass while backing FBS soccer in a corner.
That corner? Well, what would it look like if the NCAA isn’t hosting fall championships in 22 sports, but those 130 FBS shows decided to go ahead, basically on their own?
Answer: it is not good.
It is a tremendously bad optics to begin with. Various conferences and teams in the lower divisions have already decided not to play sports in the fall.
Meanwhile, for months, Power Five and the rest of FBS have been balancing the “need” to play, and earning the revenue that comes from those games, with the wisdom of playing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Players remain, after all, little-voiced fans about how they are playing in the fog of COVID-19 again.
“We are seeing a slow motion disaster,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said Thursday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Maybe. Some of the game’s power brokers on FBS have aggressively urged the board not to cancel fall sports because they know what it would look like.
West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, current chair of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, wrote to the board this week: “Feedback has consistently indicated that preserving a fall football season in some format is preferred ”
Yes, but at what cost? FBS football had already been moving, in attacks and starts, towards a final decision that could come next week or two.
However, Power Five has shown its willingness to kick the can on the go before it has to delay, postpone, or cancel the season. A late start, two-semester soccer, even soccer in the spring of 2021 are on the table.
Before any of that happens, the Big Ten and Pac-12 have already moved into conference-only hours. The SEC, ACC, and Big 12 are supposed to decide their short-term futures by the end of the month.
Few expect any of them to postpone the season. Not yet.
“The impact of the virus can change dramatically from week to week,” Lyons told the board.
It remains to be seen if hope is a strategy in that regard.
Both the NCAA and soccer in a big way have been criticized for favoring profits over academics, the rights and safety of athletes. The pandemic has separated them into different silos at this time.
Blumenthal was part of a group of lawmakers this week that criticized NCAA President Mark Emmert over the name, image, and likeness legislation. Emmert continues to petition Congress for an antitrust exemption on NIL implementation.
“He is asking us for an antitrust exemption … and time is not on his side,” Blumenthal told Emmert.
It’s not that college football can’t afford it. Soccer continues to be the financial promoter of sports in the main universities. Soccer revenue represents 80% of the FBS average athletic budget. Overall, it’s a $ 4 billion company.
We may need soccer for our mental well-being, but there are schools that need soccer to continue operating an athletic department.
Among those 22 fall sports that the NCAA could effectively cancel are FCS, Division II and Division III soccer. Those divisions organize the playoffs, only they are not as lucrative as the College Football Playoff.
You see, if there are no fall championships, there may be teams and conferences in those 22 sports that just don’t play. And who could blame them?
So what would that look like if football went big? That is why Friday is becoming a turning point. Right and wrong are found in corporate policy.
The coronavirus has already raised concerns between the Power Five and the NCAA. Could this be the problem that causes those schools to finally break down on their own?
If so, at what cost, if this is perceived as a kind of power game and even a player is hospitalized?
Meanwhile, the NCAA can rest comfortably on the moral ground. She quickly canceled the NCAA Tournament followed by the Winter and Spring Championships in March after the pandemic hit.
No one can argue against that. The last decision of the board is more than security. This time, the right thing not only implies prudence, ethics and health, but also dollar signs in the form of football.
“The decisions that the board of governors make … will be very, very fundamental,” Emmert said Wednesday.
