College football is slipping away, as we can all see. That’s really bad. It would be worse if we can’t have an NCAA Tournament or a Final Four in 2021, marking a second straight year without March Madness.
The good news — or at least, the hopeful part of this not-very-pleasant reality — is that college basketball can wait. The season isn’t done if it can’t start in January. If we have February-through-April or March-through May college basketball, is that a bad outcome? I don’t see how.
Merely being able to have a season with an NCAA tourney and Final Four would be a saving moment for college sports. It wouldn’t save everyone, but it would save a lot. It wouldn’t fix all problems, but it would fix some. It wouldn’t restore athletic budgets, but it would reduce the extent and depth of pain being felt in athletic departments across the country.
So, once again, we are reminded that:
- While sports aren’t the most important thing in a pandemic, they are still very important. Therefore, athletes are very essential workers and need protections and benefits consistent with that notion.
- If we are to play a 2021 NCAA Tournament and Final Four, a bubble is obviously — obviously! — the best path for college basketball, given the success of the NBA. Therefore, saving a lot of budgets and psyches in college sports is tethered to a bubble plan.
You would think these two basic realities would make college sports leaders much more receptive to a basketball bubble, but so far, you’re not seeing clear agreement on this.
None other than Larry Scott, the commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference, has flatly stated the bubble is a bad idea:
Pac-12's Larry Scott: "There is no bubble, and a bubble would not be appropriate in college sports."
— Nicole Auerbach 😷 (@NicoleAuerbach) July 31, 2020
Let’s be precise here: Scott wasn’t just commenting on football, but COLLEGE SPORTS. If Scott wants to play basketball, we are left to assume that Scott wants a “normal” framework — those are my quote marks, not his.
If that is the expectation from Scott and other college sports leaders, we’re screwed unless we get a vaccine in January, which — if we’re being honest — is not a likely or expected outcome.
Remember this about a vaccine: Even if a successful one is developed, it then has to be widely distributed. Populations around the world would need to access it. The coronavirus patients in hospitals and trauma centers and emergency rooms would presumably need the vaccine first. The vaccine would need to be priced affordably; it would have to go through the regulatory process. All of that would take additional time after the actual development of the vaccine, so even under the already-optimistic timeline of a January discovery of an effective vaccine, it would still take two months if not more for the vaccine to scale up production and be accessible to the wider American population. If, therefore, the vaccine wasn’t discovered/created until April, it would simply not be ready before the end of the current academic year and college sports cycle: June 30, 2021.
Translation: College sports leaders can hope for a vaccine, but a 2021 NCAA Tournament and Final Four can’t be planned based on a vaccine’s arrival.
In other words: A bubble has to be the plan IF we want to save the 2021 Big Dance and Final Four.
What will it take, then, for a bubble to happen?
My first answer is television.
We have said for the past decade if not longer that television calls the shots in college sports to begin with. Television’s voice has been awfully muted in the midst of this pandemic.
ESPN doesn’t carry the NCAA Tournament — CBS and Turner do — but ESPN is the main college sports broadcaster, and it carries the vast majority of major college basketball games through the regular season and then Championship Week (the conference tournaments).
ESPN — which is staring at the loss of a full college football season plus a full bowl season — needs to come together with CBS and Turner (which are in danger of missing a second straight year of NCAA Tournament advertising) and devise an offer to help fund and set up a bubble.
If the NCAA is serious about having a 2021 tournament and Final Four, it would be wise to listen.
The details of the plan are secondary, though I have offered a broad and tentative preliminary outline as a guide. The main point is for television to get off the damn couch and be a participant in a push for real solutions, instead of remaining a bystander.
College basketball has time to save its season, but that time cannot be wasted.
Football wasted the past five months. Television outlets need to make sure basketball won’t waste the coming five months in preparation for a regular season, an NCAA tourney, and a Final Four.