We’re 121 days until the 2020 College Football season is to kickoff with the newly formed Week Zero. As Notre Dame fans know the Fighting Irish are scheduled to play Navy that day, August 29 in Dublin, Ireland.
Much has been made of if this game will or won’t be played. It makes very little sense to me that a sporting event is alright to play but other mass-gatherings in Ireland are not alright to have. We can discuss that for literally hours but instead let’s focus on the potential good news that came from Iowa today for college football fans.
University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld said Thursday that the plan at his university for now is for athletics practices, football included, to start on June 1.
For context, here's exactly what University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld said during a question-and-answer session at the state Board of Regents meeting this afternoon: pic.twitter.com/d0tQs0WgGJ
— Scott Dochterman (@ScottDochterman) April 30, 2020
So get excited, right? Iowa is setting the trend and the rest of the Big Ten will follow and then the rest of college football quickly after.
The good news comes from the state of Iowa being in a position that coronavirus hasn’t been as severe and that talks of this are even a possibility. However, turn on the news and you’ll quickly see that for every Iowa, there is a New York, Michigan or Florida where you’re still seeing over 1000 new cases of COVID-19 per day.
I think Harreld comes off perhaps a bit optimistic but he also gave some reason as to why, right now on April 30, he sees June 1 as a possible starting point for football and other team activities.
I hope like all getup that Harreld is right. That would mean the worst of this pandemic would be behind us sooner rather than later and that college football gets started as regularly scheduled, something I have not been optimistic about for quite some time. It was Miami (FL) head coach Manny Diaz who put everything in perspective as well as anyone I’ve seen so far when he spoke to ESPN this week.
“We all know what we want, but we’ve encountered something that’s unprecedented,” Diaz said. “We have to play it out and see what we can get. That’s the difference. Let’s see how good we can get it. I believe we’ll all be appreciative for whatever we get.”
As much as I hope Harreld is correct it’s simply way too soon for us to know if things will start on June 1 like he says. Think back how different you may have viewed this pandemic just two weeks ago. Now think back a whole month ago.
Everything news-wise changes so quickly with this it’s almost impossible to be able to predict things getting started like Harreld suggests just a month from now. I’m not sold his beliefs or hopes will play out this way but I’d be beyond ecstatic to be wrong and for what should be a fun 2020 season to get started after the strangest springs of almost all of our lives.