As more and more conferences started postponing or cancelling their fall seasons, you had to wonder how long the Power 5 leagues would be able to hold out. You knew that they were going to do everything in their power to play, but, as the dominoes kept falling, you knew that possibility became smaller and smaller by the day. It eventually became a matter of who would accept the inevitable first.
The answer to that question was the Big Ten, which made the call one day after its Midwestern neighbors, the Mid-American Conference. The Pac-12 (which was my bet to be the one) followed suit soon after, leaving the SEC, ACC and Big 12 as the outliers. Those three still want to play and are going to try. But, again, how long until they're faced with the inevitable?
I get it. The prospect of not playing football this fall is something that they don't want to think about. But, like it or not, that's the reality we're living in. And the idea of playing college football in states that are still in the midst of the outbreak comes off as any combination of greedy, inappropriate and tone-deaf. It also shows how misplaced the priorities are at the schools that are still full-speed ahead preparing for a season that almost assuredly won't happen.
There's so much money involved in college football that it makes sense they were going to do everything they could to play if possible. The financial impact of not playing will be devastating to athletic departments that have already taken a massive hit because of the cancellation of March Madness. Not to mention the impact it'll have on the communities in those college towns with local businesses that are dependent on football Saturdays. So the desire to play was obvious.
However, the writing's been on the wall for months. They were just unwilling to see it. Or unwilling to accept it. Either way, the optics were terrible. You've got these football teams back on campus acting as if everything was normal while you've got other students at the same universities preparing to start the semester with online-only classes.
It's also worth noting that there are more fall sports than just football. Soccer, volleyball, cross country and field hockey are the seemingly forgotten pawns in the desire to salvage the football season. Nobody cares if those seasons happen. All they care about is football. But they can't have just football, so those other student-athletes were set to be collateral damage. Whether they wanted to return or if was safe for them to do so is irrelevant.
Everybody wishes things were different. When the NCAA cancelled everything and the sports world came to a grinding halt in March, we were all hopeful that life would be on its way back to normal by now. That wouldn't just mean college sports returning. It would also mean college campuses full of students. Unfortunately, none of those things are going to happen.
Those coaches and administrators who've been advocating playing a season and think it can be done safely point to the success of the NBA and NHL bubbles. The NBA and NHL have both done a tremendous job since their restarts. Neither league has had a positive test. Those bubbles are vastly different than a college campus, though.
College athletes, by definition, are college students. College students live and interact with other college students on a daily basis. They can't be isolated the way NBA and NHL players can in their respective bubbles. And, as we've already seen with some programs, the more interaction you have (especially if you don't take the proper precautions), the more likely it is you'll become infected. And in a contact sport like football, one infection can easily spread among an entire team, which would put also put their opponents at risk.
And, frankly, playing football this fall is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The players might say they want to play, and they might comply with all the testing and other precautions. That doesn't make them immune from infection. And as soon as there's one positive test, all liability waivers aside, the school might as well have the lawyers on standby. Especially if that player takes the field in a game, exposing players on both teams!
Simply put, playing college football this fall isn't worth it. There's still too much risk involved. I wish that wasn't the case, but wishful thinking isn't going to get us out of this nightmare. Fortunately, the Big Ten presidents and AD's made the right decision, which could not have been easy. It's not something any of them wanted to do. But they knew it was something they had to do. And they should be commended for it.
Players and coaches in the three remaining conferences were quick to jump on the Big Ten and Pac-12's decisions as "rash" and "too early." Yes, they had moved to conference-only schedules and pushed the start date back, but even that didn't guarantee a season was going to happen. And if the end result was ultimately going to be no fall football season, what difference does the timing make?
In fact, I'd argue the earlier, the better. The uncertainty is gone. You don't have players preparing for a season that they had to know was unlikely to happen all along. Big Ten and Pac-12 players at least know what's going on and can plan accordingly. Imagine what things are like for players in the ACC, SEC and Big 12, though. They have to keep going through preseason practices for a season that may or may not happen.
Moving the season to the spring has been floated as a possibility, but, to me, that doesn't seem like a viable option. Those who are advocating for a spring season either have no idea or don't care about the logistics that would be required (and the strain it would put on the athletic staff). Not to mention how it would affect the NFL Draft. Or the fact that moving the season to the spring would mean asking the players to play two full seasons in one calendar year.
Also, and I can't stress this enough, you wouldn't just be moving football to the spring. You'd be moving all fall sports. Which sounds great in theory but is impractical in reality (especially since the NCAA won't reschedule the championships in those sports). And, frankly, how fair would that be to the spring sport athletes, who already lost last season? Now you're gonna ask them to have a second consecutive season impacted so you can accommodate the fall athletes? And why should they have to lose a season when the fall athletes can simply have theirs rescheduled?
Thinking about college football returning in the fall gave a lot of people hope during the early months of the pandemic. It was a sense of normalcy that they craved while every aspect of daily life was upended all around them. As it turns out, that ended up being just a pipe dream. Life isn't back to normal. Not by a long shot. And as a result, something that was once unthinkable--an autumn without college football--will become a reality. Why? Because...2020.
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