Clemson coach Dabo Swinney told reporters he had ‘zero doubt’ that stands are going to be packed when the season begins.
Photo: Ken Ruinard/Associated PressThe first games of the 2020 college football season are not slated to kick off until Aug. 29. But with hospitals overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, testing capacity limited and a vaccine not yet in sight, it’s far from clear if health officials will sign off on mass gatherings next fall to watch young men run headlong at each other.
Some college football coaches refuse to buy into the negativity, though.
“I have zero doubt that we’re going to be playing and the stands are going to be packed,” said Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney on a call with reporters last week. “This is America, man…We’re going to rise up and kick this thing in the teeth and get back to our lives.”
In addition to the colorful pep talk, Swinney said that his family of five flew to Florida earlier in March on a private jet and may do so again to celebrate the Easter holiday. “The plane was sanitized,” he said of the March vacation.
A university spokesperson said, “If he [Coach Swinney] were to arrange private travel for personal use, it would be done via separate means,” as the university does not make its aircrafts available for personal use.
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has laid out an even more ambitious plan. He wants his staff to get back to work in the Cowboys’ football facilities on May 1, a deadline he conceded may be delayed “by a week or two.”
“We need to bring our players back…because we need to run money through the state of Oklahoma,” he said on a call with reporters early in the week. He then waded into his own analysis of the science around coronavirus data, “herd immunity” and younger populations.
“The majority of people in this building who are healthy…and certainly the 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds that are healthy, the so-called medical people saying the herd of healthy people that have the antibodies maybe built up and can fight this? We all need to go back to work,” said Gundy.
Swinney and Gundy are perhaps the most brash proponents of preserving the college football season, but it’s a sentiment that is shared more widely, if in a quieter fashion. With huge sums of money on the line, nearly half of the 112 athletic directors running Football Bowl Subdivision programs believed there was at least an 80% chance of college football being played in 2020, according to an anonymous survey by Stadium.
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy said he hopes to have his team return to its facilities on May 1.
Photo: Sue Ogrocki/Associated PressBullish coaches are likely to run into a sober reality: It’s one thing to offer optimism in this uncertain time, but quite another to flout rules and guidelines from athletic conferences, the NCAA and the state and federal governments.
For example, although Oklahoma’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 people expires on April 30, the Big 12 Conference, of which Oklahoma State is a part, has banned “in-person, voluntary workouts, film study sessions, meetings, technique drills or captains’ practices/OTA [organized team activity] sessions of any type” until May 31.
As for Swinney, health officials in South Carolina have encouraged inhabitants to stay home and Florida’s governor has issued executive orders to curb out-of-state visitors. Advisories from the Federal Aviation Administration pertaining to commercial travel, however, do not apply to the operation of private aircrafts.
The sentiment coming out of college football in early April might seem tone-deaf if only because the most accurate prediction for the fall season is “I don’t know,” said Dr. Josephine Potuto, a University of Nebraska law professor and NCAA faculty athletics representative.
That’s the stance Oregon’s Mario Cristobal is taking. In a news conference last week, he repeatedly stated that as of early April there are too many unknowns to speculate on when football may return and in what form. “As this thing gets further along and we get closer to that time, I think it would be a more appropriate time to bring a more specific answer, as opposed to giving you 25 different scenarios,” he said.
UCLA’s Chip Kelly also struck a pragmatic tone. “There’s medical experts who understand this a whole lot better than any football coach ever would,” he said on Thursday. “I’ll leave ‘are we going to play’ up to the experts.”
“Another reasonable approach would be to say it looks like things have to change, let’s get ahead of it,” said Potuto.
One thing, however, is certain: failure to play football would be financially devastating for college athletic departments. “If we’re not that fortunate and football gets impacted in a significant way there is major, major financial and structural implications,” said Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. He believes that the NCAA has until the end of May to determine the fate of the 2020 football season.
Among schools in Power Five conferences, football is the primary cash cow. In 2018, the last year for which Department of Education data is available, the basketball-rich Atlantic Coast Conference derived 44% of its revenue from football while the football in the Southeastern Conference filled 57% of athletic department coffers, according to analysis by Xavier University of Louisiana professor Cary Caro. Notre Dame was perhaps the most exposed, with football accounting for 72% of its revenue in 2018 (football’s revenue share is 37% at other independents).
Losing football has a slightly lesser impact on schools in mid-major conferences. Football generates between 26 and 31% of athletic department revenue in the Sunbelt, Mid-American, Western Athletic and Mountain West Conferences. However, these schools already received a gut punch last month when the NCAA cut its financial distribution—the lifeblood of these athletic departments—by nearly 60% in the wake of canceling March Madness.
“The Power Fives are going to be OK. Are they going to feel a pinch? Probably,” said Caro. “But if this does not go off the way as planned you’re going to see some tightening of the belts or maybe even some non-revenue generating sports being suspended for a year.”
Football is so crucial to athletic departments’ bottom lines that some administrators have suggested having games without fans—even as virtual instruction continues for all other students.
“I understand the instinct because if that revenue is lost they’re going to be looking at cutting sports, cutting scholarships or looking to the campus for money and the campus is already subsidizing athletics and they’re going to have enough trouble covering what they need to cover,” said Potuto. “But it’s hard for me to picture a campus with no students on it having athletes back to play sports.”
Clemson is one of the places where that question will play out in the coming months. Swinney initially hoped to have players back on campus in mid-May, but the university on Wednesday moved all summer classes to virtual instruction through August 7. It’s unclear whether athletes will be allowed on campus during that time, as officials did not specify the availability of university facilities.
Regardless, Swinney does not seem too worried: the image in his crystal ball remains rosy.
“I’ll leave it to the smart people to figure out the doomsday scenarios,” he said. “We’ve got one scenario, and that’s to run down that hill and kick it off in [Death] Valley.”
Share Your Thoughts
Do you think there will be a full season of college football this year? Or do you think there will be a shortened season or no season at all in 2020? Join the discussion.
Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com
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