Forget Realignment, With COVID-19 the Topic is When, How, and How Much College Football Season
STILLWATER -- Everybody is weighing in and there are two seeming absolutes about opinions on the possibility of college football this next school year in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that the United States and the World has been experiencing. One absolute is that while nobody knows for certain, everybody wants to have a college football season. The other absolute is that college athletics, in order to exist in any semblance that it has, needs to have football to fund it's operation. There was more from the ESPN show Get Up on the subject Friday that was quite interesting to go with their topic yesterday of different regions playing football this fall, while others could not because of the pandemic and coronavirus.
Yesterday the co-hosts Mike Greenberg and Laura Rutledge, with Rutledge acting as the reporter floated the idea that Rutledge said is out there that some conferences could play football, while others with the Pac-12 being most identified would not be able to.
Former Ohio State and NFL linebacker Bobby Carpenter said sources of his at Ohio State had told him they were planning on playing and being back as a group to work out as soon as early June or possibly mid-June.
"The people that I've talked to at the Ohio State University they believe by June things will start to change and then by the time we get to mid-June people will be very comfortable with everything that is going on," was part of what Carpenter said.
Former LSU and NFL defensive end Marcus Spears said the SEC seemed very determined to play football in the fall.
"The SEC, if they can play conference games they are going to play," Spears injected.
Today the same program followed up yesterday's discussion with more detail on whether it could be pulled off.
Mike Greenberg. who yesterday stated money was a consideration in all of these decisions and should be, was back quarterbacking the discussion and asked former LSU and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Booger McFarland if the regional play in college football would be a problem?
"I think it's a huge problem," McFarland answered. "When you take it a step further and you look at the Power Five and the Group of Five and their is no uniformity in college football speaks to a bigger problem that the NCAA has. The coronavirus and the pandemic is so you can have parts of the country that are worse than others, but you can't have teams playing games in one region and other regions where there is not games being played. I think there needs to be uniformity."
McFarland brought up the NCAA doesn't have any way of controlling the entire group. No, the NCAA lost control of college football when they lost the rights to the television rights to the sport. The College Football Playoff and the conferences and independent schools control college football for the most part.
Carpenter hit on why it will be very hard for a central figure to take control of major college football.
"Each conference has their own television network now. Each conference has their own TV deal and they don't want to acquiesce and give those away," Carpenter explained very well. "The reason nobody wants to give some of that away is because they are afraid of giving it all away. That is why the NCAA has lost the control is the conference want to control how they play and what they make in their region of the country."
This is pretty well displayed by all the different comments and opinions being sprayed across the country by coaches, athletic directors, and conference commissioners.
Just yesterday the Big 12 Conference announced an 10 percent paycut across the board in it's office, including the salary of Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby. Bowlsby spoke with ESPN's Heather Dinich.
"Virtually every program is highly reliant on football revenue," Bowlsby told ESPN. "We're making lots of contingency plans, but if you don't get the anticipated number of games in, you lose the donations, you lose the sponsorships, you lose the gate receipts and you lose the TV. It's potentially very impactful."
The comments have come from a myriad of college football coaches such as Clemson's Dabo Swinney.
"My preference is let's get to and go play," Swinney said during a conference call with the media one week ago. "That's the best-case scenario, and I think that's what's going to happen. I don't have any doubt. I have zero doubt that we're going to be playing and the stands are going to be packed."
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy was a little stronger and more eager wanting to get his staff and support staff back by May 1 and players as soon as possible after.
"The NCAA, the Presidents of the universities, the Power Five conference commissioners, the athletic directors need to be meeting right now and we need to start coming up with answers," the Oklahoma State head coach said inside a near hour long teleconference that included a 20 minute monologue to start off. "In my opinion, we need to bring our players back."
Gundy cited the monetary need for football, not just for athletic departments but also local economies.
That and bringing back the players with the idea that they were young and could fight the virus effectively was what Gundy was criticized on the most. He did say he wanted all participants in the program, coaches and support staff included tested, creating a clean community.
OU's Lincoln Riley was more conservative, but every bit as confident.
"I am extremely confident that we will have a season at some point," Riley said. "It may look different, the schedule may look different, the fans in the stands may look different, starting times may be different. We don't know, but we have to be ready to adjust."
Athletic directors are weighing in.
"Everyone needs to start thinking and talking about playing football in September like it is scheduled right now," Oklahoma State Vice-President for athletics and athletics director Mike Holder said a week ago. "I don't think delays are the solution. Everything is predicated on the virus and our economy and getting our country back to work."
Oklahoma's Joe Castiglione was more anti-regionalism as he said in a telephone conference with reporters on April 9. He emphasized a national approach.
“Whatever we decide will be done collectively through our conferences working together,“ Castiglione said on the call, “Obviously, those are the types of conversations I’m having not just with our ADs in our own conference, but with ADs in other conferences.”
Sportswriting Hall of Famer from Blackie Sherrod used to do a column called "Scattershooting" and, in fact, wrote a book by the same name. Right now, Sherrod would be proud of one of the sports he loved to cover, college football, because they are scattershooting in a huge way. In some ways we all are because we love college football and in the face of what is going on with the COVID-19 and not having a crystal ball to show us the future, we just want to know that we will have our favorite sport.
In the case of the people involved in the business of college athletics they want to have their favorite sport and the money it brings in to pay for all the others.
