Fractured
Cracks already being exposed around unity in college football
For all its pageantry and popularity, college football has long been a disorganized, beautiful disaster with nobody in charge to make the hard decisions or drive a meaningful agenda for improving the game. ❚ It is, fundamentally, a sport run by a committee of bureaucrats with little incentive to do anything but advance whatever is in the perceived competitive and financial interests of their conferences. While the NCAA manages certain elements, like the rules of play and recruiting restrictions, most of the important dynamics for FBS run through the conferences.
When college football is viewed through that dynamic, it makes a lot more sense why it took forever just to get agreement on a four-team playoff, why conferences raid each other's members every 20 years or so and why simple things like how to run summer camps regularly turn into food fights.
In other words, college football is not really built to navigate something as complicated as a pandemic. And for all the initial talk of unity behind the scenes among the commissioners of the five power conferences, cracks are already exposing themselves.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has laid the groundwork in recent media appearances to argue that if his schools are ready to play football this fall, that's what they should do – even if schools in another area of the country don't have the all-clear to bring students back to campus and resume normal activities. Pac 12 commissioner Larry Scott has urged schools moving in concert. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has suggested the possibility of a season that starts relatively on time but might face disruption in November or December because of a resurgence of the coronavirus.
The mere notion that college football power brokers would be comfortable essentially leaving some schools behind because their states are not open yet, and while body bags are still piling up around the country, is both crass and entirely predictable, as institutional selfishness has long been a feature, not a bug, of this sport.
In fact, in a Zoom session with reporters Wednesday, Penn State coach James Franklin basically said the quiet part out loud: Why should his team be handicapped in trying to compete with the SEC because Rutgers might still be too much of a hot spot to open up on time?
“I don't think you're going to like it and I don't think people are going to be happy about it, but in reality, I don't see how you'll be able to hold up 10 or 12 schools in one conference (because of) two states that are opening up a month later,” Franklin said. “And that's the same thing by conference. I don't think you can penalize one conference from opening because another conference is opening way ahead.”
If colleges open, leagues will want to play
Meanwhile, this conversation is all happening with the backdrop of campus-level officials doing their best to prepare for a season and any potential changes in their normal operating procedures but not getting a lot of answers yet on the most critical questions, such as what happens if one player tests positive for COVID-19.
Nevertheless, from a practical standpoint, Franklin is likely to be correct because in the end, there's really nobody in charge to tell the SEC or ACC they can't start playing if their schools are ready to go. And at this point, those two leagues in particular – both because of their football prominence and their location largely in states that are currently loosening restrictions on movement – are ultimately going to drive the conversation.
In conversations with more than a dozen officials across college athletics this week, a picture has emerged of a sport that is determined to return to normal as fast as possible, even if a remarkable number of unknowns still exist.
When Iowa president Bruce Harreld told his Board of Regents last week that his school was targeting June 1 to “get back to practice,” he wasn't lying. Officials at five other schools confirmed to USA TODAY Sports that they were optimistic football players would return to campus at some point in early June. Those officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because none of those plans were finalized.
The idea behind bringing football players back to campus soon is intertwined with the notion that the vast majority of college campuses simply cannot afford to be shut down this fall.
While certain elements of the university experience may look different – classes that alternate between in-person and online to facilitate smaller gatherings, older professors teaching remotely, dorms converted into quarantine hospitals – colleges are determined to make it work, for better or worse. No longer is the conversation around universities how to prevent cases, it's how to deal with them.
So consider the idea of football players returning to campus in June, along with other groups of grad students for example, as something of a soft opening – and, frankly, an experiment. The truth that nobody wants to say publicly is that many of the answers people want about what constitutes a truly safe environment for college athletes may not be there until we see what happens, largely because we've never dealt with anything like COVID-19.
But because of the apparent low risk to healthy college-aged students, it seems more and more likely that universities will be able to justify giving it a try.
“The SEC is really itching to get back into play,” said one industry insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the league.
Summer practice will be risky
Ultimately, though, the idea of bringing college football players back to campuses as early as June carries some of the same risks as states deciding to open before they have even satisfied the Phase 1 guidelines from the White House. If practice starts and things go poorly, or if there's an outbreak in a locker room, it could further jeopardize plans to start a season close to on time.
Meanwhile, athletics directors are operating on two fronts: Trying to figure out how often players need to be tested (still no answers there), and what their stadiums will look like if games are played.
Some schools are in talks with architecture firms about how to create more open space and ways to build more strict entrance and exit models so that people aren't crowding. Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick mentioned tailgating as a concern.
Traditional ways teams move through crowds on game day – like Auburn's Tiger Walk or Tennessee's Vol Walk – are almost certainly not going to happen. Teams may need to reconfigure locker rooms so that players are farther apart from each other. South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner said in a university town hall that it was “likely that social distancing will be in place at Williams-brice and our other venues,” meaning reduced stadium capacity. That, of course, spawns other issues like who gets priority for those tickets.
Ultimately, it all points to one conclusion: The wheels are turning toward college football being played this fall, with perhaps only a minor delay at the start of the season. But with no one actually leading the sport, the axles aren't in alignment, creating a potentially chaotic summer where the desire to return outpaces the necessary answers.