Benedict has no regrets about football
One by one, conference by conference, major college football is returning to our nation’s fields. In recent days, the Big Ten, the Pac-12, the Mid-American Conference and Mountain West all have thumbed their noses at COVID-19 and reopened their bank accounts to announce truncated autumn seasons.
Don’t look now, but UConn is one of only three of the 130 FBS schools not playing in 2020. Fellow independent New Mexico State and Old Dominion of Conference USA are the others.
UConn athletic director David Benedict is OK with that. UConn was the first FBS school to cancel its season, and if it’s among the last remaining, so be it. By the time we were finished talking Tuesday, in fact, Benedict had set off a couple of caution lights for the qualifying integrity of the NCAA basketball tournament. Hey, it’s Connecticut. Hoops are king and queen.
“The overwhelming reason we made the decision to begin with on football — if you go back to our press release (of Aug. 5) — I still think the majority of that still applies,” Benedict said. “That’s not to say that I believed at that time no one was going to play a single game.
“The fact people are playing or making decisions from not playing to playing, I’m not necessarily surprised and/or impacted by that. It’s still the best thing for our program.”
When UConn canceled the fall season on Aug. 5, Benedict talked about receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting players. The safety challenges created by COVID-19, he said, placed the players at an unacceptable level of risk.
He also said the measures needed to mitigate risks weren’t conducive for
an optimal team experience, and that the players would rather preserve their year of eligibility with an eye toward competing under more typical circumstances in 2021.
“Our guys are working out, getting developed,” Benedict said. “If there’s an opportunity and it makes some sense for us to play in the spring, and things with the virus are in a different place, that’s something we’d consider doing. It’s something I talked to Randy Edsall about, but nothing necessarily on the books yet for that. We’re going to do everything we can to develop our kids so we’re hopefully ready to go in an environment next year that’s back to normal.
“You can look around the country, and places are having various levels of success relative to playing. Houston is a perfect example. I don’t know if anyone has had it worse than them. It’s still a difficult environment for teams that are trying to play.”
Houston has not one, not two, not three, but five games either canceled or postponed due to CO
VID-19-related issues. Rice, Washington State, Memphis, Baylor, North Texas — so many games, so many twists. The Cougars will try again for their opener Oct. 8 against Tulane.
As of Tuesday, we counted 23 FBS games either postponed or canceled by
COVID-19. Notre Dame, which postponed its game Saturday against Wake Forest, announced Monday it had 18 positive tests, with
25 players in isolation and
14 more in quarantine. “I talked to another friend of mine, a new athletic director, and they got a call on Friday to tell them that the game they were supposed to play wasn’t going to happen,” Benedict said. “They obviously put a lot of time and effort into their ticket situation, their facilities, and you find out on Friday you’re not going to play? That’s tough on everybody, tough on the fans, tough on the kids mentally. For all those reasons I still think we’re in a good place.”
There is one caveat: eligibility.
“The only thing that is significantly different to me now than when we made the decision — and it doesn’t change anything for us — but when we made the decision there was a thought process if your kids played more than four games they’d lose their eligibility.”
On Aug. 21, the NCAA Division I board of directors approved a blanket waiver to give all fall sport athletes an additional year of eligibility and an additional year to complete it.
“It’s pretty interesting and amazing that that’s the conclusion they came to,” Benedict said. “If you play a full season or 10 games, I’m not sure I understand the rationale in giving those kids an extra year, but that’s what the decision is.
“I think everyone should remember in our situation, unlike teams affiliated with conferences, when we made the decision obviously our schedule was over. To try to go back and recreate something of value to our program and student-athletes … like I said, we believe we made the right decision.”
When the Division I Football Oversight Committee last week recommended the removal of normal requirements of at least a .500 record for its 41 bowl games this season, it opened the door for teams with every kind of record. Ha! SMH. More importantly, the CFP committee will have to choose four teams among schools that could play seven games or 11. There are precious few inter-conference games. Not to mention we don’t know how many more games COVID could cancel.
“It’s going to be very difficult to balance that decision-making process,” Benedict said. “But to me it’s going to come down to the same eight to 10 teams in the conferences that typically get the nod. Is this the year UCF goes undefeated and they have a chance? I don’t know.
“I overheard a conversation of someone talking about their fantasy football team. The guy was saying only a couple of weeks into the season and he’d lost all his receivers to injury. That’s something I don’t know if everyone is tracking. I promise you at the end of the season there’ll be a higher injury rate than previously. These college kids and the professionals did not have the same opportunity to get in the shape they normally do.”
Turf at Met Life, conditioning, ill fortune, whatever, the 49ers were down 10 projected starters against the Giants on Sunday (the fact that the Niners still won easily is an entirely different column).
So, Mr. AD, you think college basketball — the real season in Connecticut — will go much more smoothly around the nation?
“No, I don’t actually,” Benedict said. “I think the basketball season is going to be challenged, because the guidance that’s coming out from the NCAA in football if you have a positive test you’re not necessarily shutting down the entire team. Contract tracing isn’t necessarily going to trace back to all 100 kids. Whereas in basketball, the recommendation right now is if you have one positive you basically have to shut down the entire team for two weeks. If that happens to you twice, you could lose close to a month.”
The NCAA has capped the maximum games at 27 if a school plays in a multiteam event like the ones planned for Mohegan Sun. Otherwise, it’s 25. Money for guarantee games is down and that hurts smaller schools. No fans in the stands. No fat checks.
“I think the early part of the season will go smoother,” Benedict said. “You’re going to have empty campuses. It minimizes the opportunities for your kids to be impacted. There’s no one around but themselves for the most part. That will be helpful.
“But when everyone comes back for second semester and everyone is coming from home? Depending on what the virus is like, it’s going to be the same thing we experienced coming back from the summer where everyone had to manage the initial hit with kids.”
Which leads us to one of the great sports arguments every year. Who’s on the (non-COVID) bubble in March? With far fewer nonconference matchups and varying total games, Selection Sunday could be a food fight.
“You’re talking about football, how are you going to select the field (68 for the men, 64 for the women) when there’s not a lot of nonconference games played?” Benedict said. “All your NET rankings and stuff are kind of blown out of the water.”