This specific COVID-19 college football column was planned a week ago, simply because we are approaching the point in time when college football leaders and power brokers have to make decisions about the coming season. There are no more planned columns beyond this one; the next COVID-19 college football column you see on this website will be a response to a specific piece of news. We’re going to get news stories before too long.
On Friday, I wrote about the need for college football to consider a scaled-down season, which could legitimately be viewed as a scattered collection of games more than anything resembling an actual “season.” College football could refuse to play any games at all, but it could try to play three or four games in the fall, then two games in place of spring football next April, and wind up collecting roughly half of its TV revenues. That’s not great. It also beats a scenario in which college football plays zero games until late August of 2021.
If we are going to adjust — and more precisely, downscale — our expectations and allowances of what’s possible for college football in the fall and the next several months in general, a reduced-game plan wouldn’t be the only thing the sport would need to do.
We couldn’t realistically have nonconference games involving a lot of travel by the visiting team, or neutral-site games involving two plane flights into a third and separate state (which is exactly what we would have if USC did play Alabama in Arlington on Sept. 5).
If college football is going to make an attempt to play a collection of games (I use that phrase to separate it from a full season; the two are very different), it would seem necessary to confine those games to short-distance situations in which the visiting team can either ride a bus or not be on a plane for anything more than an hour or 75 minutes at most.
Alabama and Auburn could play Troy, UAB, South Alabama, and maybe each other this fall.
LSU could play Tulane, Louisiana Tech, and the two Mississippi schools.
Ohio State could play Cincinnati, a pair of Ohio-based MAC schools, and Michigan.
Clemson could play South Carolina, Wake Forest, North Carolina State, and Appalachian State.
USC could play San Diego State, Fresno State, Arizona State, and UCLA.
You get the point.
These games would amount to bits and pieces of a fuller season. It wouldn’t be a complete meal. It wouldn’t amount to a normal, comprehensive college football experience… but it would reduce travel. It would reduce time spent on buses and in planes. Many more games (not all, but more) would be kept within state boundaries, meaning there would be far fewer occasions in which governors — who have a lot on their plate right now — have to coordinate with each other and possibly take on any negative consequences which could arise from positive COVID-19 test results due to out-of-state trips.
There would be no Notre Dame-USC game. There would be no Florida-LSU game. There would be no Oklahoma-West Virginia or Washington-Utah.
Yes, we all know this sucks. It’s not what we wanted.
But: It’s better than having zero games played this fall.
It would be weird. It wouldn’t be fully satisfying. Yet, it might be the best way to have any games whatsoever while significantly reducing risk to the athletes who would be putting themselves out there.
(Side note: Can we see now — if we haven’t seen before — the necessity of a college athlete union which can bargain for take-home pay and added health care provisions in all of this?)
Let’s get rid of the notion that we can have the same kind of college football season we have had for decades — you know, the one with 12 games, a conference championship game, and a full set of bowl games?
I have maintained that college football SHOULD indeed try to play games. I am not and have not been part of the “shut it down now” crowd. My stance is that if one coach or athlete gets SEVERELY ill from COVID-19, that would merit an immediate shutdown. Until we get there, we should try to play… so this is not a natural extension of a doom-and-gloom view.
We should, however, realize that a normal season and everything we might associate with “normalcy” is not realistic right now. Let’s get something out of the year, rather than nothing.
That’s not great, but it’s okay.
“Okay,” under these circumstances, isn’t the worst possible outcome. It might even feel like an achievement if pulled off. Next March, we could look back and say that a four-game, reduced-travel plan in autumn was the best the sport could have done.
Now, we wait to see what college football’s leaders will decide. When they make a decision or come close to one, you’ll hear about it here at Trojans Wire.