Is NC State On Board With Louisville to Start 2020 Season on Time?

The Cards and Wolfpack are (tentatively) scheduled to kick off the 2020 college football season on Sept. 3 at Cardinal Stadium. Louisville has optimism that the season will start on time, but does NC State?

Without a doubt, the biggest topic of debate within college football is if the upcoming 2020 season will start on time. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has cast real doubt on this issue, considering it has already cut short spring practices across the nation for many programs and forced the NCAA to institute a mandatory recruiting dead period, among other things.

Fortunately, we are starting to see signs of life for an on-time 2020 college football season, at least on Louisville's side of things. Last week, Athletic Director Vince Tyra announced a phased plan to get student-athletes back on campus for voluntary physical activities. If this plan goes off without a hitch, Tyra said he is "planning" on next season starting as scheduled.

But what about the competition? Are they ready?

Louisville is (tentatively) scheduled to begin the 2020 season against NC State at Cardinal Stadium on Sept. 3. Tyra said that he could envision a scenario where not every member of the Atlantic Coast Conference is ready to go when everyone else is due to any number of reasons surrounding the virus.

Since the Wolfpack are first up on Louisville's schedule, are they as confident as the Cards? On Tuesday, NC State Football head coach Dave Doeren spoke to the local media and had the following to say on the matter;

"I think we're definitely going to play football. I don't know if we're going to start on time or not, don't know how many games. But I do know college athletics needs college football for a variety of reasons. What our sport gives our country coming out of this lockdown where everybody just can't wait, everybody's starving to watch competition right now. Just seeing how things are trending, I'd say we're on a good track now to have the game. I just don't know how the stands are going to look like. I have no idea what that's going to be like, how that's going to play out."

Like Tyra, Doeren too has doubts about how the stands will look once college football does make its triumphant return. He's not nearly as optimistic about starting on time, but however he is confident about the game coming back in some fashion. Granted, he doesn't have the pull that NC State AD Boo Corrigan does, but it's nevertheless pleasant to see any form of optimism coming out of Raleigh, NC.

Time will tell if the second year of the Scott Satterfield era will begin as planned.

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