No luck for playing Irish?
Niumatalolo doubtful Mids’ opener vs. ND will go off on time
Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo expressed doubt about the college football season opening on time in an interview last week.
Speaking on Glenn Clark Radio, Niumatalolo was pessimistic about the prospect of Navy playing Notre Dame in Ireland on Aug. 29.
“Everybody wants to maintain status quo and start the season on time, but nothing I see indicates that will happen,” Niumatalolo said during a live interview on the show. “I think it’s going to take some time.”
In an interview with the Baltimore Sun Media Group, Niumatalolo, who has been stranded at his home in Hawaii since the coronavirus pandemic caused drastic changes in American life, also mentioned the possibility of the college football season being held during the spring semester.
“I really wouldn’t be surprised if we played in the spring,” he said. “I see us having a season, but I think it will be much later this year or at some point next year.”
The Midshipmen are scheduled to open the 2020 season against the Fighting Irish at Aviva Stadium in Dublin. While emphasizing he was only expressing an opinion, Niumatalolo suggested a late August start date might be overly ambitious.
“We understand that football produces the revenue for all the other sports programs,” Niumatalolo said. “Athletic directors do not want to imagine a fall season without football. There are some tough discussions going on right now.”
Moving the season to the spring semester would cause a major disruption to NCAA sports as it would mean college football overlapping with the NCAA Tournament for basketball along with traditional spring sports such as lacrosse and baseball.
If college football season is not held during the fall semester, the financial impact on Division I athletic departments would be significant. Many observers have opined that other varsity sports would need to be cut due to the anticipated revenue shortfall.
Naturally, the question of when the 2020 college football season would begin hinges on the country reopening. For the Naval Academy, it would be a question of when midshipmen would be allowed to return to campus.
Niumatalolo said it would take two months to realistically prepare a football team for the season opener. Navy is already way behind in that process since spring practice was canceled.
“I would say at least a month of working out and a month of practice,” Niumatalolo said, adding that it’s a priority to ensure player safety. “Coaches will always want as much time as possible. However, they might say you only have a month to get ready to go. If that were the case, we would have to figure it out.”
Navy would normally have most of its football players on campus for part of the summer for strength and conditioning workouts designed to make sure they are in top shape heading into August training camp.
“How many practices do you need to make sure your players don’t get injured? I don’t know what that number is,” Niumatalolo said. “We’re all dealing with a moving target, so we don’t know how to plan for it.”
Some college athletic administrators have broached the possibility of playing college football in empty stadiums in order to preserve the television revenue. Niumatalolo scoffed at that suggestion, saying an environment unsafe for fans is certainly not conducive to putting players, coaches and support personnel on a football field together.
“I don’t see us playing in empty stadiums,” he said. “You would be doing that for safety reasons? So that means you’re willing to jeopardize the players, coaches and support staff?
“You might have close to 250 people on the field between both teams. In our game, there is no social distancing. Guys are going to be touching each other a lot.”
Niumatalolo’s comments came in the same week Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk expressed optimism the NavyNotre Dame will be held as scheduled. Gladchuk told it was premature to predict whether or not the contest can be held in Ireland on Aug. 29.
“We are five months away from teeing it up against Notre Dame in Dublin — an awful lot can happen in the span of five months,” Gladchuk said. “It’s simply just too early to speculate about a college football season that does not start for five months. We don’t need to make any sort of decision today. We don’t need to create any further anxiety.”
Billed as the “Aer Lingus College Football Classic,” the annual Navy-Notre Dame matchup is already sold out. Aviva Stadium has a seating capacity of 51,700, and more than half of the spectators are expected to come from the United States.
Gladchuk has been in communication with Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick, and both were in agreement on pressing forward with the game as scheduled.
“Jack and I haven’t even talked about a Plan B or Plan C,” Gladchuk said. “Once the cards are played and we know exactly a specific time frame, the right decision will be made. We’ll follow through with the game as scheduled or address some alternative, which could mean playing the game elsewhere or on a later date.”
A potential option involves moving the game to an NFL stadium in the U.S. if traveling to Dublin is not possible. Postponing the contest by one week is possible because both Navy and Notre Dame are off Sept. 6. The two schools do not share any other bye dates.
Postponing until later in the 2020 season could prove problematic since the schools do not share a bye week. Navy is off Oct. 10, but Notre Dame hosts Stanford on that date. Similarly, the Fighting Irish have a bye on Oct. 24, while the Midshipmen are home against Houston that Saturday.
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