Just fifty-nine days until Michigan and Michigan State are set to kick off their respective football seasons.
And yet, here we sit on July 8 with much of the college sports world still stuck in neutral.
Sure, members of both school’s football teams are back on campus to get into playing shape — with broader, more organized team workouts set to begin on Monday — but everything else seems to be in flux.
College football is no closer to figuring out whether it will play games this fall now than it was back in May. Or even this time last month, when the number of COVID-19 cases nationally seemed to be declining.
Fast forward a month and cases are on the rise again. Yesterday, July 7, the country set a single-day high of more than 60,200 cases. That’s enough for decision makers around college football to take pause and reconsider a plan to start the season on time.
In fact, the Ivy League will be doing just that today — with its members set to vote on whether to play sports this fall or move them to the spring. Harvard may have already telegraphed the conference’s decision by announcing Monday plans to hold the fall semester remotely, with only 40 percent of undergraduate students allowed to live on campus.
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Recall, it was the Ivy League that first shelved its men’s basketball tournament in March, just as the novel coronavirus was beginning to take hold in the U.S. Some in the public mocked the decision at first. Then, just days later, every other conference followed suit, leading to the cancellation of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, effectively putting a halt on the sports world.
And Harvard is not the only school to make such an announcement. Also this week, Rutgers, a member of the Big Ten itself, announced plans to hold most of its classes this fall virtually with “extremely limited” on-campus housing. In a letter to campus, university president Jonathan Holloway said he wanted to resume a normal semester but rising COVID-19 cases nationally and public health concerns in New Jersey forced university officials “to make a different decision.”
What does that mean for the rest of the Big Ten and college football? At the moment, very little. Many of the sport’s power brokers insist that it’s still too early to determine the fate of this season. It’s a different business model or it’s in a different part of the country, they will argue.
Then there’s this, from Patriot League commissioner Jennifer Heppel: “If it costs too much to maintain a healthy environment at our institutions and our communities, then we don’t play sports or we don’t return students to campus,” she recently told ESPN. “We’re not going to compromise health and safety due to a football guarantee. That’s crazy. If we can’t do it safely, we’re not going to do it.”
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While a vast majority of college football programs have been able to keep the virus at bay (Michigan says it has registered just two positive COVID-19 cases among the 194 student-athletes tested; MSU has had four positive tests, two by the same player, among the more than 275 tests), a handful of programs have halted voluntary workouts due to an outbreak.
With few other students on campus this time of the year, what will happen to teams when the general student population returns in late August? When some congregate in dorms, study halls or nearby bars and restaurants? A college football season may begin, but how great will the risk of infection be when students try to resume a sense of normalcy this fall?
More importantly, will it be worth it?
All these of questions will need to be asked by university leaders, local and state health officials and conference officials, all of whom are expected to make the call on whether a college football season can begin as scheduled on Sept. 5. (Games are also scheduled for a week earlier, Aug. 29.)
The clock is ticking. Decisions will have to be made over the next two to three weeks for the season to start on time.
Yet, it doesn’t feel like society is any closer to resuming normal activity comfortably — let alone play football — than it was two months ago. And given the current climate — surging cases in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, among other states — it’s difficult to forecast an environment in the U.S. much different than now two months from now.
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The clock is ticking on college football in the fall - MLive.com
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