With news that the Big Ten won’t play football in the fall, it seems like the first domino has fallen with college football now that a Power 5 conference has taken the step to delay its season.
That could mean other big conferences could follow suit, and we’ll be completely without college football on Saturdays.
Of course, the situation could be a golden opportunity for the NFL if the league wants to take it. And per a Pro Football Talk report, it could happen.
“The NFL likely will move games from Sundays to Saturday, if college football doesn’t proceed this season,” a story from last week reads. “It’s unclear whether the games would be broadcast, streamed, or distributed on a pay-per-view basis, but the league likely would backfill the vacant Saturday windows with NFL content.”
Yes, sports fans would be over the moon with excitement to have a football fill-in, assuming all goes as planned with the NFL.
But there’s one really good reason why the league shouldn’t do it: player health.
NFL GM tells me he believes it’s a forgone conclusion the NFL will play regularly on Saturdays if no CFB.
— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) August 10, 2020
We know from Thursday night games played in short weeks that it’s harder to recover in that small window than in a normal week. That leads to a bad product on the field and injuries (although some studies of Thursday night injuries didn’t conclude there were more injuries in TNF games than in other games, we know from the players themselves that they HATE playing on Thursdays, and it’s possible some minor injuries aren’t necessarily reported). Saturday games give players one less day of rest and recuperation.
Then, in 2020, we have to account for COVID-19 testing. The one thing the NFL has going for it is games that are spaced out for the most part, which can give players and teams time to figure out if players test positive. When you’ve just played another team and sweated and wrestled your way through a game, it’s going to be vital to have every day necessary to make sure testing works. Cut off even a day, and there could be serious problems.
So, sorry everyone: let’s keep the NFL schedule intact, and we’ll hope that college football — if it’s delayed — in the spring arrives for us to enjoy in 2021.
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