Earlier this week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sent a letter to leadership at both schools strongly advising them to suspend any contact sports, including football, for the upcoming fall season. The news was first reported by the Albuquerque Review Journal and could be an interesting peg to fall out in the upcoming 2020 college football season. Right now it’s New Mexico asking their schools to not play football, what if tomorrow it’s Arizona or California?
When schools began their move to conference-only scheduling, the idea was to keep it simple. It would allow schools to have an easier time doing tracking and tracing if a player were to come down with COVID-19 or at least that’s the theory. But conference-only isn’t going to solve every problem and if the above question were to become a reality, conference-only testing would not save California from having to shut down large athletic events.
New Mexico is a small domino, but it’s a domino nonetheless. The Coronavirus is only getting worse and states are starting to see dramatic rises in confirmed cases, but also death tolls. Playing the season is going to be a challenge and if states have to do a random shutdown in the middle of the season for safety events, it’s going to make it very awkward for the teams that were supposed to play them suddenly having to sit around and not play because USC, UCLA, San Diego St., San Jose St., Stanford, Cal, and others can’t play by order of Governor Gavin Newsome.
This season is anything but a sure thing. We’re finding out first hand just how tough this is going to be and the NCAA hasn’t even come close to announcing a comprehensive testing plan and recovery plan for infected athletes. They’re telling students to report and having them sign waivers, but they’re not doing anything to protect them and provide them with a stable environment, largely free of the Coronavirus. If this is the NCAA’s plan, it’s going to a very, very, very short season.