With college football at risk of being delayed, here are options under consideration
Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz said he’s optimistic the college football season will start on time.
ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said he doesn’t expect any college football this year.
And Chris Fowler, Herbstreit’s partner on ESPN’s lead announcing team, said a spring college football season has emerged as what some believe is the most “prudent” plan.
While no decisions have been made about the status of the college football season amid the coronavirus pandemic, the apparent deadline to decide isn’t that far off.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott told Bay Area News Group that the end of May is the approximate deadline to determine the direction of the college football season. Fowler said he has been told the same by people involved in planning various scenarios for how the season could be played.
Whether the nation’s medical experts will be able to offer clarity by late May is highly questionable. And that’s why a delayed start to the season is appearing more of a possibility, though far from a certainty.
What people in college football are saying:
▪ Fowler, via his Instagram account, said: “The good news is I am convinced there will be a college football season in the academic year of 20-21 at some point. I would call this informed speculation. I’ve had conversations with people in the planning stages; they’re not the decision makers.”
Fowler said there are three scenarios under consideration: starting the season on time; starting the season a bit late and shortening it; and moving the season to next spring.
As for the first scenario of starting on time, Fowler said: “Time is running out because I’m told by the end of May there has to be clarity. College football is way more complicated than any pro sport. Chancellors and presidents will make the decisions for their schools, not coaches and athletic directors. Scenario one doesn’t seem super realistic.”
As for scenario two, of starting the season in November, Fowler said: “To me that sounds problematic. People are worried about a second wave [of coronavirus] and you want to start a season and shut it down? To me, that would be disastrous.”
Fowler said playing the season next February or March through June is the one “a lot of reasonable people feel might be the most prudent course of action. I think testing will have come a long way by then.”
▪ Here’s one big problem with starting the season on time: Speaking to the Santa Clara County (in the California Bay Area) Board of Supervisors, Dr. Jeffrey Smith said — via the Los Angeles Times — that he did not expect there would be “any sports games until at least Thanksgiving, and we’d be lucky to have them by Thanksgiving. This is not something that’s going to be easy to do.”
Santa Clara County is home to Stanford and San Jose State.
And here’s something else to keep in mind: It’s doubtful that college presidents would authorize having games if the general student body isn’t allowed on campus for classes.
▪ Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told ESPN he doesn’t want games taking place in empty stadiums.
“I don’t see a model where we play, at least any extended number of games, in facilities where we don’t have fans,” Swarbrick told ESPN.
“College football is about the cheerleaders and the band and the campus environment on game day. We’re interested in solutions that allow us to have a traditional game-day experience. There might be a middle ground where you say, the first two games of the season, you might have to make some accommodations. Maybe you only have students in attendance and you don’t invite other fans. I couldn’t see us going past a very limited example of that.
“How does college football operate if several states are in a position where they’re not prepared to allow college football to be played, but other states are? My sense is everybody has to be able to go. There aren’t very attractive versions of this where you say, ‘Well, schools in 30 states will start the season and those in the other 20 won’t.’”
▪ North Carolina coach Mack Brown agrees with Swarbrick; he told ESPN’s Paul Finebaum that “I don’t think we can have football without fans. I can’t even fathom it. If it’s not safe for fans, it’s not safe for players. They’re going to be breathing on each other for four hours.”
▪ But here’s the problem with some college football people insisting there be fans at the games: The Detroit Free Press talked to two experts — Dr. Brian Schwartz, vice chief for clinical affairs in the division of infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco, and Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health — about how the NBA could resume play.
Both ruled out the possibility of fans returning to arenas before a vaccine for COVID-19 is mass produced, which is at least a year away from happening, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The same thinking also could be applied to college football, with fans closely packed together at games.
▪ Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock explained the need to get in the college football season, even if it’s “on the moon in January: All of us, or at Tech, we have one sport that generates revenue, we have one sport that breaks even (men’s basketball) and we have 20 that operate off of what football generates. So football’s important for football’s sake. And for the entire student-athlete experience in every sport, football is critical.”
▪ Of a fall football season, Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips said “there’s absolutely a possibility it may not happen. There will be a college football season only if and when the medical experts, CDC, state regional and national leaders declare it to be safe. And it won’t be made by a football coach, an athletic director or a university president.”
▪ Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek appears among the minority in predicting the college football season will go on exactly as planned.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Yurachek told the Democrat Gazette. “I think that will happen. I think we will get a full football season in. I think that will start on time. I think it’s something that our community and our country desperately needs, for professional and college athletics to start back up again.”
It ultimately won’t be Yurachek’s decision.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 1:24 PM.
