Welp, college football is seemingly just about done for the autumn of 2020, with an announcement being imminent. The leaders and power brokers in college sports aren’t primarily responsible for this mess; the United States Government is the main culprit.
Our supply chains were too dependent on China and other outside outlets. Government didn’t send monthly checks, paying people to stay home with the regularity needed to encourage best practices and ideal behaviors. Paycheck protection programs weren’t implemented to preserve jobs. Small businesses weren’t protected to the extent that elite corporations were. State computer systems weren’t upgraded and modernized to the extent that they could process unemployment claims.
Hospitals lacked PPE. Public health officials sent out inaccurate and conflicting pieces of information in March, when the public needed to get full accuracy and clarity on how to proceed. Mass testing infrastructures were slow to develop. Everything was behind the curve.
All of these realities mattered a lot more than any of the decisions made by the leaders in college sports. All of the government’s failures carried a lot more weight in causing college football to be wiped off the calendar this fall.
Yet, we can surely say that college sports’ leaders did not cover themselves in glory. For one thing, university presidents — people with a certain amount of power and influence — were obviously not able to lean on representatives and Senators in Congress to impress upon them the need for far bigger spending to address the problems caused by this pandemic. In many ways, the pandemic has revealed college sports to be very impotent and ineffective as an industry, unable to inspire the kind of response Congress and the government at large both needed to provide.
Leverage-playing failures aside, the other big shortcoming of college sports leadership in this pandemic has been the inability of the various conferences to work together. The Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC chose conference-only game schedules as adjustments to the pandemic, a sign that they lacked confidence in coordinating and collaborating on COVID-19 safety measures with other conferences. The lack of unifying, galvanizing leadership in college sports has been laid bare, with NCAA member schools being the guilty parties.
Don’t blame Mark Emmert. Blame the school presidents who installed him in his position and have allowed this larger structure to persist in a state of paralysis and unresponsiveness.
College sports leaders aren’t primarily responsible for the postponement (and possible cancellation) of college football, but they certainly deserve a considerable amount of secondary blame. We can’t undo this. We can’t unring the bell.
What college sports leaders can do, however: Get it right for basketball.
It’s time to work hard to create a bubble framework and enable college basketball to be played. I drew up a preliminary plan in late July at Trojans Wire.
Keep this point in mind: The 2019 college football season was completed. As bad as this 2020 postponement is, college football has lost ONE season.
College basketball, on the other hand, has already lost one NCAA Tournament and one set of conference tournaments. The cancellation of the 2021 college basketball season, if it happens, would mean two straight years without an NCAA Tournament.
There was nothing which could have been done to prevent the 2020 NCAA Tournament from being canceled. The timing was simply awful. That’s life.
Not being able to have a 2021 NCAA Tournament, however? That would represent an enormous failure on the part of the NCAA and college sports leaders.
The NBA is humming along with a bubble plan, as is the NHL. The NBA is particularly relevant not just because basketball is the sport being played, but also because Florida has been a recent hot spot for COVID-19. The bubble format has been able to lock the virus out regardless. The NCAA has solid, reliable information from the NBA which can be used to implement a bubble structure for the coming season.
Whereas football needs to be played in the fall semester, basketball can wait until the other side of the holiday season and play in the winter/spring semester. Having more time in which to create a plan gives the NCAA far fewer excuses to play a basketball season and an NCAA Tournament.
Crying and complaining about college football won’t solve anything. Getting it right and saving basketball’s upcoming season is what the NCAA and the college sports community have to work on… with basketball players getting hazard pay and fully guaranteed health care as a first requirement.
Let’s see if the leaders of college sports have learned a damn thing.
I’m not sure they have, but they need to… and then they need to show they are at least somewhat competent at their jobs.