LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It doesn’t take too many conversations with college athletic directors to come away with one overriding determination from their COVID-19-altered landscape: They want and need to play the college football season, the whole season, and nothing but the season.
That definitely was the feel from Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra, who preferred moving the season in its entirety to playing a condensed version. And that’s the takeaway from ESPN’s Chris Fowler, who is well plugged in to both the university and media scenes as talks escalate on what will happen with college football in the fall.
Fowler released an 8-minute update on his Instagram page, sharing what he called “informed speculation” on the coming season.
“Will we have a college football season that unfolds normally? I say that’s impossible,” Fowler said. “What is normal even going to mean in society? In sports? I think normalcy might take a long time, and there might just be a new normal in a lot of areas, including sports.”
Still, Fowler is hearing, like the rest of us, that college athletic departments simply can’t afford to lose football, the economic driver for most of them.
“I am convinced there will be college football season in the academic year of 20-21 at some point,” Fowler said. “What might it look like?”
Folwer said the scenarios he is hearing come from “conversations with people in the planning stages – they’re not the decision-makers, but they’re planning for three scenarios.”
Here, he said, are the possibilities:
1). ON-TIME START. The problem with this scenario is that time is of the essence. Administrators would need a definitive “all-clear” signal by the end of May, and they’re not likely to get one. Fowler said the NFL is under “heavy political pressure” to start on time. But colleges are a different story. They exist in all 50 states, run by different state and local governments. And Fowler said getting everyone on the same page could be too difficult a task.
“All these places, it seems unlikely, given that this virus is cresting, and the peak is at different places in different times,” he said. “Maybe it’ll happen. We hope it’ll happen. But hope is not a strategy ... that’s what got us into this mess in the first place ... So it’s a hope but doesn’t feel realistic to me.”
2). DELAYED START, CONDENSED SEASON. It’s an option. Begin football in November and push the postseason back and perhaps shorten the schedules.
That’s a problem for athletic departments, because it means less revenue and more headaches in terms of which games get lost and which remain. For this reason, Fowler didn’t sense a great deal of support.
3). SPRING GAME. This is the most radical scenario, but one Fowler said is picking up support. The season starts in February and is played in its entirety. It would cause havoc with college basketball and other spring sports, but as we’ve come to learn in college sports, football comes first.
Fowler said the option, “on the surface might sound preposterous, but I think a lot of reasonable people feel it might be the most prudent course of action. Begin at some point in February, into March, April, May, maybe have the postseason in June.”
By that time, perhaps vaccines may be available on a limited basis and treatments better developed.
“To avoid the disaster of not having football at some point in the academic year, I think it might be a fallback position,” Fowler said.
He suggested the next six weeks would be a “hold our breath and be patient” period in sports – and perhaps all of society.
“You cannot believe the conversations around the sports landscape, the desperation to get things going and what it might take,” he said.
But at the forefront will be the safety of college athletes. They are unpaid, and asking them to put themselves at risk of the COVID-19 virus, even if they aren’t in a vulnerable population, is unthinkable to many college presidents, who will in the end be making the call, along with medical experts.
In the end, Fowler strongly believes that there will be a college football season. Beyond that, nobody knows a whole lot else.
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