There’s no bubble in college football

The famous line from the old football movie “North Dallas Forty” seems to apply now more than ever as the debate rages about whether college football should be played during one of the most trying times in American history when positive COVID-19 tests are exploding across our nation.

Remember the line?

“Every time I call it a business, you call it a game. And every time I call it a game, you call it a business.”

That, you see, is the dilemma, dichotomy and duality of college football.

It is not only a great game, but also a big business.

That has become quite clear during the past week when we’ve seen some smaller conferences like the Ivy League and the Patriot League punt and say there will be no college football this fall. Meanwhile, the big boys in the Power 5 are still studying every option possible to play as many games as possible.

Let’s be honest, shall we? It was a nobrainer decision for the Ivy League to call off football because the eight schools in the league don’t make any money on football.

In fact, they actually lose money on football. They don’t have massive TV contracts with ESPN and CBS and they don’t draw 90,000 fans per game. In contrast, the schools in the big-boy conferences are part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that desperately need to play in some way, shape or form in order for a perennially broken business model to stay afloat.

Here’s all you need to know about the out-of-control spending in college sports: Iowa State athletics director Jamie Pollard sent out a letter to boosters earlier this week in which he put the financial doomsday scenario out there for everybody to see. In the next six months, Pollard said, Iowa State will have $40 million in expenses — expenses that likely can’t be paid without a

football season. Imagine the expenses at bigger programs like Florida, Georgia, Ohio

State and Clemson.

This is why Florida State last week slashed its athletic operating budget by 20% and cut 25 full-time employees. It’s why former Gators AD Jeremy Foley told me last week that, yes, big-time college programs have “cash reserves to get you through a rainy day, but, obviously, this isn’t a rainy day; this is a hurricane.”

And it’s why every AD and commissioner in every major conference is exploring every option and alternative when it comes to playing this season.

“To use a baseball analogy, we owe it to our athletes to try to run out every ground ball to figure out a way that we can get to the point where we can play games and we can have competition

for them,” current UF athletics director Scott Stricklin said earlier this week during a videoconference with reporters. “But understanding we’re not going to do that until we get to a point where we think their health and well-being and safety are in as good an environment as we can make it.

“… There’s a lot of talk out there about budgets and financial needs and all that stuff. It obviously helps support what we do in college athletics, but all of that is secondary to making sure that the health of our athletes, our staff and ultimately our fans is a priority.”

I don’t doubt anything Stricklin is saying. His point is that college athletes WANT to play this fall not only because they love the competition but presumably because they want to showcase themselves for NFL scouts. Will it be completely safe? No. But going to the grocery store isn’t completely safe either. I refuse to

believe that any commissioner, athletics director or school president would haphazardly put players in peril just for the sake of the almighty TV dollar.

Let’s face it, college football really isn’t any different from Disney World or Universal Studios — massively profitable theme parks that are trying to reopen as safely as possible at a time where safety is not entirely possible.

And it’s certainly no secret that college football is probably the most unsafe sport of all during a global pandemic. Why? Because there are more players and less control over those players. Unlike professional team sports like the NBA and MLS, which are attempting to restart within a selfcontained bubble, college football players cannot be put into a bubble.

“College athletics I know is very popular and it generates a lot of attention, but it’s still an extracurricular activity on a college campus — an academic institution’s campus,” Stricklin says. “And so there’s nothing about that that says bubble. Unless you wanna consider 35-36,000 undergrads a bubble.”

The sport is also confronted with another major obstacle — the obstacle of optics. For years, college football and basketball has been accused of making billions of dollars on the backs of exploited, unpaid athletes. Don’t kid yourself, in these volatile times, there will be a massive media and public outcry if college football puts its student-athletes out on the field in the middle of a raging pandemic.

See what happens when a wonderful game turns into a big business?