Everything I have written over the past few days at Trojans Wire has tried to reinforce a few core points:
First, if any coach or athlete gets severely ill as a result of contracting COVID-19, we pack it in and wait until we can stage normal football games under relatively normal circumstances.
Second, as long as no coach or athlete gets severely ill, college sports and other sports leagues should try to play… emphasis on the word TRY.
Third, though sports should try to play, no one should think — or expect — that we can have normalcy in sports, especially full legitimacy of championships won or lost. Legitimacy of championships is not particularly important under these circumstances.
Fourth, the two reasons sports leagues and organizations are trying to play in a pandemic are economic (TV money) and psychological (ease the mental burden of Americans who are restless, anxious, or both in a pandemic and everything it involves). Sports exist right now not to provide uplift and emotional resonance, the way they often have; sports — played in stadiums or arenas without fans — are a TV vehicle meant to provide respite and distraction for the common people. It isn’t business as usual; sports aren’t aspirational right now, but are instead meant to soothe the populace in these unique circumstances.
Those are the four central points I have emphasized to this point in my week of writing on college football and COVID-19.
The next step in this progression of thoughts is as follows: College football can’t have an all-or-nothing mentality over the next several months.
What does this mean? It flows from what I recently wrote: Sports — as an economic and psychological form of damage control right now (minimizing economic disaster and providing a healthy psychological release valve) — are events played in front of cameras. Giving people something to look at, and giving schools and sports leagues a needed infusion of TV dollars to improve their balance sheets, are the reasons sports are trying to go forward in a pandemic.
As such, notions of normalcy and legitimacy aren’t important. The mere act of putting a game on TV is the goal and achievement these sports leagues — and the college sports industry — currently seek.
Therefore, if we accept that normalcy and championship legitimacy are not important goals, and if it matters just to recoup TV money, let’s dispense with any notion we have to play a full season, which invites maximum risk for players and coaches.
We don’t have to have a full season; we don’t have to sell the populace on a goal which currently seems very unrealistic.
Let’s compromise by trying to play a small number of games. It is better than playing zero games and not having anything to offer to the public.
Very simply, this is how a compromise plan might work:
Teams play three to four games through Saturday, November 7, and then stop as colder weather and the impending flu season (with a possible second/later wave of coronavirus) approach. Teams would play once every three weeks, so as to provide a 21-day window between games so that any 14-day isolation or quarantine periods would be less likely to mean an inability for athletes to play. There would not be weekly plane flights or bus rides. Every school would get time to process and analyze its procedures. Players would not be strong-armed into making hasty play-or-not-play decisions, or at least not as often.
If games are played weekly, schools and athletes might face a constant stream of impossible choices. If games are played once every three weeks, those impossible choices won’t be eliminated, but they will be reduced.
Three or four games this autumn? It might seem like peanuts, but would these schools and conferences prefer an alternative scenario in which no games are played?
Schools would get 25 to 33 percent of TV revenue for playing one-fourth or one-third of a season slate.
Schools would then hole up during the winter and — come April — put a twist on “Spring Football.” Schools would play two more games, also three weeks apart, as a replacement for spring practice. (Remember: The pandemic would not affect the eligibility of any athlete… or at least, it shouldn’t. Eligibility status should be frozen in place if we don’t play a full season.)
The result would be that schools would play five or six games, roughly half a season. It’s not a great outcome… but it’s a lot better than playing zero games. Risk to athletes and coaches would still exist, but it would be reduced, relative to any (foolish) attempt to play a full season. Athletes would not be overworked in all of this. There would be TV inventory to give to the public. Players who would want to enter the 2021 NFL Draft would have game film to give to NFL teams. Underclassmen will not have been idle for a full year; they would have gained some real game experience.
Aside from this proposal, Jon Wilner — the excellent college sports columnist and reporter for the San Jose Mercury News — provided his own alternate plan within the context of the Pac-12 Conference. It’s well worth the read.
Wilner is thinking bigger than I am, with an eight-game plan instead of four. However, he makes an appropriate and well-thought-out emphasis on uniformity of scheduling, testing, conference revenue sharing, and on allowing schools flexibility if COVID-19 positive cases disrupt teams’ plans. College football and the college sports industry need to consider these kinds of adjustments in a climate which is anything but normal.
Once again: If any player or coach gets severely ill from COVID-19, this all stops; none of it would get off the ground… but as long as we don’t reach that automatic trigger for a full shutdown of college sports, why wouldn’t this small-scale four-game plan (with two turnaround games in the spring of 2021) make sense? Getting nearly half of TV revenue sure beats getting zero.
As college football approaches a point where it has to make some decisions about the 2020 season, an all-or-nothing mentality is the last mindset the sport must have. It ought to pursue an entirely different way of proceeding.