When the Ivy League was the first Division I conference to cancel its conference basketball tournaments in March, people initially assumed the esteemed academic conference was overreacting.
Back then, even experts were still in the early stages of learning about coronavirus and how it might impact sports, let alone everything else in the world. Playing in front of no fans was just being talked about, canceling wasn’t even an option in most fan imaginations.
But the Ivy League lists plenty of experts in just about everything among its alumni and faculty and they were undoubtedly smart to listen and pull the ripcord when they did. Within a week, everyone else followed in North American college and professional sports followed.
On Wednesday, the Ivy League will announce a decision on whether it will play college football this fall or not. Unless there’s a surprise change, the league will announce that it’s planning to move its football season to the spring.
Ivy football is not overly consequential in the sports world and it’s even that big on most of the league’s campuses. There’s not millions in TV revenue being lost and with endowments in the billions, the schools can afford any financial loss better than many of the bigger programs nationally.
But the rest of college sports should follow them again. Or listen to Dr. Fauci. The celebrity disease doctor said without a bubble – and there’s no way to play college football in a bubble – football isn’t safe this fall.
This will spark a parade of non-experts on Twitter arguing that for college-aged players COVID-19 isn’t deadly. And they’re right if things are judged on a myopically narrow scope of whether or not the participants are still alive at the end of the season.
While 20-year-olds aren’t likely to die, they are at risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome, a serious lung condition that hasn’t been talked about enough and could seriously hamper anyone’s future, athletic or otherwise.
Imagine Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, the presumed No. 1 overall pick in 2021, seeing Patrick Mahomes’ new contract and still wanting to risk playing in these conditions for nothing.
Asking a kid, who doesn’t get paid to take that risk is unethical, amoral and just stupid given the liability involved.
Switching to the spring is not only the safe move, but it’s a smart one too.
There’s a really good chance a season started in September doesn’t get finished. If the predicted second wave arrives, colleges and universities will likely have to switch back to online education and NCAA sports will be shutdown indefinitely. If the season shuts down on Oct. 15, it’s not getting restarted in March. There’s almost as much if not more money to be lost if a school spends all that money on testing and added safety measures for a season that is stopped after six weeks.
Schools could play a 10-week season from March to May. There’s a real chance, even a good chance a vaccine could be in place by then. If that’s true they can play a lot of the season with fans in the stands which would also be a huge financial boost for schools, who could use the cash. They could try to arrange weekends with basketball, hockey (which might also be pushed back) and football all on campus so fans could come and spend money at more than one game.
There would of course be some challenges.
Some likely high level NFL draft picks might skip the season all together and some possible draft picks might quit early if they get injured especially if the NFL wouldn’t move the draft out of its usual spot in April.
It’d be mostly conference games which means postponing or untangling some scheduling contracts. There would probably be fewer bowl games and less time between the regular season and the bowls and probably fewer bowls.
But with NBA and NHL playoffs in the 2020-21 season likely pushed back, spring wouldn’t be a bad time to in the calendar to fill with TV programming rather than competing against the restarted playoffs of hockey and basketball in the early fall (presuming they stay afloat in their bubbles).
There have been countless positive tests already in college campuses and undoubtedly more at schools that aren’t reporting them and that’s only from informal workouts. It’s presumably going to get worse when players are breathing the same air across the line of scrimmage and under the pile on a goal line run.
Keeping the season in the fall means playing whatever portion of the season gets in under the fear of cancelations. Canceled games if a team has an outbreak or a canceled season if a region or the entire country does.
If they make the switch now they can start rescheduling games and tweaking contracts with time to do it effectively rather than waiting a month or more and rushing.
The problem of course is that there is no commissioner of college football and the sports’ structure limits the influence NCAA president Mark Emmert has.
For the sport to move to the spring, a top shelf conference - probably the Big Ten or the SEC – has to lead, or at least follow the Ivy.
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
Related content:
A.D. Ryan Bamford confirms UMass football has positive coronavirus test
"football" - Google News
July 08, 2020 at 05:15PM
https://ift.tt/2ZKw67Q
College football should move 2020 season to spring, avoid a coronavirus disaster | Matt Vautour - MassLive.com
"football" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2ST7s35
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "College football should move 2020 season to spring, avoid a coronavirus disaster | Matt Vautour - MassLive.com"
Posting Komentar