Tag: 2020 football plans

ACC Commissioner Gives Four College Football Scenarios for 2020

ACC Commissioner John Swofford outlined the ACC’s current plans and hopes in regards to college football in 2020.

ACC Commissioner John Swofford addressed the media on Thursday after meeting with conference representatives. In his media address he outlined four scenarios in regards to both college football in 2020 and collegiate sports as a whole during the 2020-21 school year.

The Four Scenarios:
1.  Football schedule played as currently scheduled
2.  A shortened football season
3.  No football but basketball is played as scheduled
4.  No sports at all for the 2020-21 academic year

If you see scenarios three and four and get worried, Swofford was at least optimistic that neither would play out, saying “We are going into this year with the anticipation of playing at this point.”

“All of our institutions are indicating they intend to open in various fashions as we go into the fall.”

Swofford also noted that the ACC would most-likely be willing to proceed with the season even if some member schools aren’t ready or able to participate.

“I think probably so,” said the commissioner. “I don’t know what the threshold is on that. We haven’t really reached a point of having that discussion. I’m sure we will in due time as to whether it’s three-fourths or two-thirds or 50 percent or whatever it might be.

“But I don’t think some schools not being able to compete necessarily keeps a majority of the schools who could compete from competing. It’s premature to answer that question fully at this point.”

It’s nice to hear someone speaking and thinking positively but to me, it’s just more words at this point.  I remain hopeful for the schedule to at least start on time but to think we know how things will even look three weeks from now, let alone three months, we’re kidding ourselves.

Just a Matter of Time Until Notre Dame/Navy in Ireland is Called Off

It appears to be just a matter of time until Notre Dame and Navy’s season-opener in Dublin gets officially called off

It was supposed to be a season opener like very few before it.  Notre Dame and Navy were (and technically still are) scheduled to start the 2020 college football season in Dublin, Ireland with ESPN’s College Gameday on location.  The game technically still could happen we suppose but news it out Tuesday says that at best, fans likely won’t be included.  At least not very many of them.

Per Irish Times:

Ireland is set to announce the banning of all events with 5000 or more people with authorities being told not to grant licenses for large events in this period due to the coronavirus crisis.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the rest of this out.

Notre Dame and Navy aren’t going to be flying across the pond to play a football game in front of fewer than 5000 fans, especially with the fears of flying and doing unnecessary travel right now.  You can go to a local high school and play in front of a crowd that size, why in the world would you fly teams and staffs to Ireland to play a game that pretty much nobody is allowed to attend as fans?

There may not have been a statement made by the Naval Academy yet, it is their home game after all, or Notre Dame’s but that’s just the period at the end of the sentence at this point.  With this news out today it tells us what we all expected but hoped against for a while, that is that there will be no season opener in Ireland this year.

Now we hope for the best case scenario, however unlikely, to be that the game can be played on the same date in the United States.  Brian Kelly and Jack Swarbrick have been open about alternate plans already being discussed about that, now will come the next steps which will include the official cancellation of the Ireland game which could come in days, if not hours.  Also to come is the decided location of the game and date, which could already be known but is being withheld in event it’s never necessary to actually announce.

Let’s hope against that and instead the game gets moved to the mainland and is actually played the last weekend in August.  I think we’d all be thrilled at this point if football at all is played the last week of August whether it be in Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Orlando or at a high school field.