Non-SEC schedule may have two holes

Season’s questions include availability of Colorado, Fresno

COLLEGE STATION — The Southeastern Conference wants to get this show on the road — and at home — starting in September. The Pacific-12 isn’t quite as confident during the global pandemic, and that impacts Texas A&M’s early schedule.

What happens if the SEC chooses to play football this fall and the Pac-12 does not? The Aggies will be in rapid motion to find a replacement for Colorado on Sept. 19 at Kyle Field.

“The only things we have to compare it to are changes that occur around tropical storms or even going back to (the terrorists acts of ) 9/11,” A&M athletic director Ross Bjork told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday. “If certain programs can’t play or dates don’t match up, the impacted programs have to pivot and try to schedule new opponents.

“But right now, it’s all hypothetical.”

UCLA and Southern Cal of the Pac-12 are in Los Angeles County, and on Tuesday that county’s public health director said “with all certainty” another three months will be added to the area’s stay-at-home orders — pushing the directive well into August.

Most college football training camps start in early August, so such an order could directly impact the Pac-12, which Colorado joined in the summer of 2011.

“We’re planning a full season and planning to start on time, but it’s so unpredictable what’s going to happen,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said on sports broadcaster Dan Patrick’s show Tuesday. “We’re spending a lot of time not only within our league but with our peers in other conferences thinking about, ‘What do plans B, C, D and E look like?’

“In college there’s not one decision maker, especially when it comes to football. … It requires

an extraordinary level of coordination.”

It also means a program like A&M, with the approval of the SEC, could push on without Colorado and replace the Buffaloes with a team — perhaps one within the region — able to travel to College Station on Sept. 19.

A&M and Colorado met eight times as members of the Big 12 starting in 1996 but haven’t played since each university bolted the Big 12. The Buffaloes went west nine years ago; the Aggies shifted east a year later. A&M is scheduled to play at Colorado,

the Aggies’ first trip to Boulder since 2009, on Sept. 11, 2021.

In addition, A&M is scheduled to host Fresno State this season on Oct. 10. The California State University system, which Fresno State is a part of, declared Tuesday it does not intend to have students on its 23 campuses this fall, increasing the odds A&M will need a replacement for the second Saturday of October.

The Aggies’ other non-conference opponents are Abilene Christian on Sept. 5 and North Texas on Sept. 12, both at Kyle Field.

Of course, as Bjork and Scott and others have pointed out, no one knows what’s going to happen concerning the immediate

future of college football.

“We’re all throwing out different scenarios on different timelines,” Bjork said. “But nothing has been decided.”

Nearly two weeks ago, A&M chancellor John Sharp directed his 11 university presidents to “make this happen” concerning getting students back on campus starting in the fall — and playing the football that typically comes with that time of year.

While the NFL might concoct a setting where games are played with no fans, that would be more difficult to pull off with college athletes, considering they’re playing for scholarships and stipends and not contracts worth millions of dollars.

“I don’t believe we’re going to play football if students can’t be brought back safely to campus,” Scott told Patrick. “I don’t think we have the ability to quarantine (athletes) or put them in a bubble the way some pro sports might (do).”

One advantage college football has over the NFL is chunks of the country can opt to go ahead and play games while other regions sit out the season or play a truncated schedule.

“If we can’t play a full season … a natural abbreviated season (would be) to move to conference (play) only,” Scott said. “That’s always an option.”

If the Pac-12 opted to simply sit out this fall under stay-at-home directives blanketing much of the West Coast, the Big 12, SEC, Big Ten, ACC and others could still press on with their respective schedules and replace impacted non-conference games accordingly.

All are crossing their fingers it doesn’t come to that because of the financial impact of canceled or lessened contests. But the bottom line, as of mid-May, is no one is certain what to expect come September.

“We’ve looked at everything,” Bjork said of exploring all possibilities of playing football this fall.