Swarbrick also goes on to say the next “mile marker” to have an idea as to when students may return to campus will come when a decision is made on if those taking summer classes will actually be on campus or if they’ll all be done online.
Notre Dame athletic director is quoted Wednesday night in Pete Thamel’s most recent piece about whether or not there will be college football in 2020. The Yahoo! Sports reporter gets quotes from other administrators but states the most important thing that needs to happen before we can even begin to think there will be college football as we know it this fall:
But for those looking for hints of hope for college football’s return, they should start with the clearance for students to return to campus.
Thamel and Yahoo! reached out to a dozen different administrators nationwide, Notre Dame’s Jack Swarbrick being one of them.
Swarbrick points out the mixed messages of telling students to stay home and athletes to come to campus if the conditions don’t abate.
“It’d be very hard to do,” Swarbrick said. “There’s a liability. Some of the dynamics of the game being what they are. The nature of it is such that there’s significant risks.”
Swarbrick also goes on to say the next “mile marker” to have an idea as to when students may return to campus will come when a decision is made on if those taking summer classes will actually be on campus or if they’ll all be done online. For what it’s worth, earlier this week Ohio State announced they were moving all of their in-person summer classes to only being online.
Swarbrick is also quoted at the end of the piece with the following:
“Nothing quite matches the unique issues that are created by the activity being integrated into an academic institution,” Swarbrick said. “There’s nothing like it in other sports.”
The whole piece is worth reading if you’ve got a few minutes to spare (again, link is posted in the first paragraph here). Until we start to see students showing up on campuses around the nation we aren’t going to see players suiting up. It’s kind of common sense but makes a lot more sense the more you think about it.
