College Football's Opening Night Has Covid-19 Breaking Even with Games Played

This could be the first season in any sport where the bookies add a new kinda prop bet:

Odds on whether any particular schedule college football game will even be played.

They might even toss in a teaser option to cover postponements.

In the Year from Hell, nothing's out of the question. What's gonna pass for the 2020 season may well be equated to giant slalom skiing, where missing a gate knocks a competitor outta the race. Missing a game due to Covid-19 may have the same sorta ramifacations for conference and national title hopes.

 

Then again, missing Covid-19 itself may well be equated to another sport ...

 

With the first night of the 2020 season in the books, the best that can be said is college football held its own against what in the name of Dr Fauci are you doing:

Covid-19 postponements ...

• Jacksonville State at Florida International
• Rice at Houston

Results ...

• South Alabama 32, Southern Mississippi 21 in front of around 10,000 fans, and
• UAB 35 Central Arkansas 25 with the attendance limited to 12,716.

As more games come into view, surely the percentage of postponements will decrease, but that's not the point. What matters is the possibility that someone in the quasi-bubble football programs create gets really unlucky.

 

That's the most important bet the college programs are making, but it's not the only one.

Since the ACC, Big XII, and SEC have decided to dodge the odds with a limited schedule, will the Big Ten and Pac-12 hold to their decision to sit 2020 out?

The sure thing: one side or the other is gonna cave.

In the meantime, perhaps the on-site game experience will be as weird as the pro sports that are bubbling, things don't look all that bizarre on the TV stage. That was fine with South Alabama, as the Panthers used the occasion to win their first road game since 2017:

 

Given the state's passion for college football being right up there with religion and grits, it's only fitting that the other victor on the sport's opening night was UAB, the team that rose from the ashes to resurrect its program.

Even though it never shoulda been closed down in the first place.

 

Anyway, muggy though it was, the Blazers were cruisin' cool with the possibility that nary a virus appeared.

Only a possibility, of course, but if it did, no one noticed because UAB was too busy winning:

 

So it begins.

How it ends is up to fate and short-term medical advances ... of any kind.