I spoke with a handful of Power Five Conference athletic directors this week.
All of them, concerned.
Even with our country working to flatten COVID-19 infection rates and find a vaccine, the 2020 college football season isn’t a certainty. Three major college ADs told me this week that they’ve been instructed by administrators on their campuses to explore multiple models.
Among them...
Version A: The 2020 college football season happens on time, with full stadiums, as it always has. Given that the average Division I college football program generates more revenue than the averages of the next 35 NCAA sports combined, this is a best-case scenario financially. And it’s a model everyone involved would welcome because it would likely mean a vaccine had been developed.
Version B: The college football season happens on time, but without fans allowed in the stadium.
Version C: The college football season starts several weeks late and the football programs play a truncated version of the season in front of fans. If so, a question: How much time does a football team need to get ready for a season? I asked Rick Neuheisel because the long-time college coach just went through that exact scenario as the head coach of Phoenix entry in the Alliance of American Football.
Said Neuheisel: "I can tell you if you have a month, they’ll be fine. If they can all get together on Aug. 1 and be ready to go, they’ll be fine. The kids will be close enough to shape that they can get back into shape, they’ll be fine. If you can get a little more time, a couple of weeks in July to acclimate, they’d be fine.”
One month, he said. Anything short of that and you’d have to consider lopping non-conference games off the front of the 2020 schedule. If so, Oregon might lose home dates vs. North Dakota State and Ohio State. And Oregon State might lose its opener at Oklahoma State.
Version D: A Pac-12 Conference athletic director told me his university president asked him to run a financial model that included the 2020 season being delayed until a March 2021 start.
The entire “2020” college football season would potentially be preserved under this scenario. Television would still carry all the games. Also, given five extra months to build confidence, fans might be more inclined to visit the stadium on a Saturday. This model would create a rapid-fire turnaround to the 2021 season and there would be overlap with college basketball and March Madness, but it would result in a full season being played.
Version E: No 2020 season at all. No games until the 2021 season. Bill Gates gave an interview on Wednesday on PBS Newshour in which he said Americans may not be safe from COVID-19 until fall 2021. Gates used China as an example, pointing out, “They are sending people back to work, but they’re wearing masks. They’re checking temperatures. They’re not doing large sporting events. And so they have been able to avoid a large rebound.”
Gates said that large public gatherings (i.e. sporting events) wouldn’t be wise until there was vaccine available, something he believes will take about a year to develop.
Everyone I spoke with about the college football season pointed out that public health and the safety of athletes and spectators were the highest priority. The ADs want to play all of the games and would love to capture maximum revenue while doing so. But nobody wants to play college football games that would endanger the public or athletes.
Said Neuheisel: “It’s nice to know that humans are pulling for humans. It’s not us against them, it’s us against this COVID critter that is wreaking havoc.”
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April 09, 2020 at 08:07PM
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Canzano: College Football coronavirus contingency plans include possibility of no 2020 season - OregonLive
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