College football must weigh move

Pushing the season back to spring makes sense with the recent spike in coronavirus cases.

SPORTS

As much as we all desperately want college football season to start on time, the sport may be better served adopting the same reminder we use to recall which direction to adjust our clocks at the beginning and end of daylight saving time. Spring forward. Fall back.

Don’t kid yourself, with COVID-19 cases exploding in many states across the country, there are more and more discussions behind closed doors about pushing back the traditional fall football season and instead finishing it in the spring.

“The one thing you don’t want,” one high-ranking college administrator told me, “is to start the season in the fall and then have to shut it down after a couple of games.”

Obviously, when it comes to a pandemic, attitudes and opinions can change from week to week. After all, three weeks ago many Floridians thought we had eluded the worst of the virus, toasted our good luck in crowded bars without wearing masks and thought college football would not only start on time but start on time with a limited number of fans in attendance. Now, with an eye-opening number of positive COVID-19 tests among college players nationwide, we are back to wondering if there will be a season at all.

Which is why college football athletic directors and conference commissioners need to start seriously thinking about pushing back the season to spring. A decision doesn’t need to be made today, but as Nebraska AD Bill Moos told the Lincoln Journal Star recently, a decision is going to have to be made by the third week of July.

“I’m holding out hope that we’ll play,” Moos said. “But every time I turn around lately, it seems like the pandemic is spiking

somewhere, and that’s concerning because it starts pushing our backs against the wall.”

The Ivy League is so concerned that it is already investigating the possibility of forgoing the entire fall season in favor of a seven-game, conference-only spring season, according to a report from TMG Sports. Granted, the Ivy League isn’t a big-time Power Five football conference, but it is a well-respected voice due to its lofty academic standing.

Let’s not forget, at the beginning of the pandemic it was the Ivy League that first canceled its college basketball tournaments and quickly moved to cancel its entire spring sports calendar. The rest of college athletics soon followed.

The situation has become so dire that many conference commissioners and big-time ADs are mum right now about the upcoming season. I’ve reached out to a few ADs in recent days and none of them wanted to speculate on the record.

In addition, many universities, including all of the major players in the state of Florida, are not releasing information about how many football players have tested positive for COVID-19. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the skyrocketing number of positive tests in college football hotbeds Clemson and LSU are becoming a huge public relations issue for the sport.

The positive tests are alarming for obvious reasons. It’s troubling that players are testing positive at a high rate even though they haven’t even begun practicing yet. Players are simply working out in their school’s athletic complex while presumably practicing social-distancing rules.

But what happens when school starts and college players are exposed to thousands upon thousands of students returning to campus?

You don’t need to be an expert epidemiologist to realize that college football is the one major sport in this country where it is nearly impossible to control exposure to COVID-19. There are too many players and too many variables to keep college football teams in a bubble.

These are, after all, college kids. They’re going to go out, go to keg parties, do what college kids do.

And unlike the NFL or NBA, college football players are not pros. They don’t get paid or have a union to negotiate and look out for their best interests. Can you imagine the outcry and the optics in September if university administrators send a bunch of college kids out to play football in the middle of a raging pandemic?

This is why pushing the season back to January and finishing in May is starting to make more and more sense — both medically and fiscally. Who knows, by January maybe there is a vaccine or maybe the COVID-19 cases have significantly dropped

because we Americans will have finally started taking the necessary precautions and stopped idiotically politicizing the pandemic.

And by January maybe we can actually play college football games in full stadiums, which is something that college football administrators desperately desire. As much money as elite Power Five schools make on their conference TV deals, they still make the majority of their money from ticket sales, concessions, parking and booster donations for premium seating and luxury suites.

The Florida Gators, for instance, got a check for $43.8 million last year from the SEC’s TV deals but made $60 million on ticket sales and booster contributions alone. Think about it: Much of that $60 million disappears if fans are not allowed into the stadium.

“If that’s the only way to get in a football season, it would have to happen,” UCF AD Danny White told me several weeks ago when I asked him about pushing back the season to start in January and end in May.

“I don’t think college football can afford NOT to exhaust every single option.”

Translation:

Spring forward.

Fall back.