UGA athletic director Greg McGarity says the school is ‘planning as if a football season is going to happen’ for Georgia football
Colleges across the country are starting to feel the significant financial burden on sports that comes with the coronavirus.
Prior to the cancellation of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the NCAA was set to disperse $600 million to Division I schools. Now it will only be sending out $225 million, a 62% cut.
Now we all know that we will be without a college basketball postseason, as well as all other major professional sports for a while, but the question still remains; will we have football in 2020?
“Depending on football, obviously, that’s the big unknown now,” University of Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said in an interview with Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald.
“We’re planning as if a football season is going to happen. If that doesn’t happen, that’s a whole another environment.”
All universities spring football games have been cancelled but we are still a ways away from the regular season. McGarity’s statement is a good sign for Bulldog and all football fans, but schools are still starting to prepare for the worst.
Georgia sold $33.4 million in ticket sales for the 2019 season, and that’s just revenue from fans who go to the games. They also have a number of other major sources of football revenue that will be lost if football is not a reality for 2020.
“We’re hoping and praying that doesn’t happen,” McGarity said. “We also have to be realistic if football was not part of that what does that mean with our reserves, how much of the reserve can we utilize to make us somewhat whole. That’s why we have a reserve, thank goodness. We’re probably in better shape than a lot of institutions because of our financial stability.”
ESPN’s college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit is among those who have a more skeptical outlook on the upcoming 2020 CFB and NFL seasons.
“I’ll be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. I’ll be so surprised if that happens,” said Herbstreit on ESPN Radio.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this matter, but Herbstreit brought up the point that vaccinations are estimated to take roughly a year or more to become available.
“Just because from what everything I understand, people that I listen to, you’re 12 to 18 months away from a vaccine,” he added. “I don’t know how you let these guys go into locker rooms and let stadiums be filled up and how you can play ball. I just don’t know how you can do it with the optics of it.”
McGarity also mentioned that the athletic department will only be spending on essential operations and virus related issues until the pandemic is over. Georgia should be able to handle an economic dip like this and is preparing for the absolute worst, but hoping for the best.
There are still 162 days until Georgia is scheduled to kickoff the 2020 football season against Virginia. We will keep you up to date with the latest coronavirus news and the impact it will have on the 2020 football season.
