Under any other circumstance, there would be widespread outrage over Notre Dame and Navy not playing each other during the season. But COVID-19 has proved to be the one circumstance that there isn’t. Most people understand that concessions have to be made if college football goes on as scheduled. After all, everything else has been affected.
However, that hasn’t stopped the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, from saying something about it. On Sunday, the newspaper’s editorial board published a piece about the cancelation of this year’s game. It talks about how different the college football landscape is today compared to when the Notre Dame-Navy rivalry began. The piece’s main gripe is with the ACC, which it says forced the Irish to pick revenue over loyalty to the rivalry by mandating its teams to play its one allotted nonconference game in its home state.
With growing pessimism that college football takes place this fall, opinions like this might be moot pretty soon. Still, the things Notre Dame has had to sacrifice for the season like its independence and all of its annual rivalry games reflect the times we’re living in. We all want everything to go back to normal as quickly as possible. Until then, we’ll have to accept that this is how it has to be without anything to combat the virus besides face masks and social distancing.