The Great 2020 Season Pullback Has Begun

Word has it the Ivy League schools are loaded with a hella lotta smart dudes and dudettes.

When they make decisions, then, it's odds-on they've got a clue.

So, it's worth noting they were the first league to call off their post-season hoops tournaments last spring and ban fans from all other sporting events being held then.

It's as if they'd seen enough to understand that a storm was threatening their very lives that day.

 

And before everyone else realized, a new sorta fire was sweeping out in the streets today.

Not long thereafter, the rest of college sports discovered Covid-19 was raging like a mad bull that lost its way.

Shelter, children, may be a shot away, but no one's found it yet. Understandably, fans are gonna wait until someone does.

In the meantime, it may be time to pay attention to the Ivy League again.

 

They've already postponed the football season -- along with all other fall sports -- until springtime. Other FCS and lower-division leagues will surely be following soon.

For a second time in 2020, should the big-brand leagues be taking the hint?

Reality is starting to indicate for a second time that they may not have any choice. It's beyond clear that Covid-19's striking everywhere without warning and, incredibly, more than it was in March.

 

The 2020 football season shrinkage has begun.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 have already jettisoned their non-conference schedules to cut down on travel and maintain common testing standards within their leagues.

It's left a mark. As in 73 games blown off the schedules in the last two days, including some traditional matches as well as non-con A-level games. For example:

• Notre Dame-USC and Notre Dame-Stanford
• Ohio State-Oregon and Michigan-Washington
• Penn State-Virginia Tech and Michigan State-Miami

 

The magnitude of those budget busters can be seen merely by looking at Stanford's athletic program.

Like the Ivies, Vanderbilt, Duke, et al, that school damn near prints its diplomas on $100-dollar bills. However, combined with the low-revenue Pac-12 Networks sucking wind, lost football games -- and ones that'll be played in empty stadiums and then near-empty stadiums -- figured in 11 sports getting the ax.

Stanford's not the first to do that this year. It won't be the last. Those B- and especially C-level non-con opponents aren't gonna get their cash-cow whuppins as glorified scrimmages to pad the big-brands' records. A few of them, like Bowling Green, Central Michigan, and Northern Illinois will lose two of them

2020 could well be known for a college athletics' trickle-down bloodbath.

 

At least the USA's institutions of higher learned proved they were by recognizing the fine line between human existence and human subsistence. Show a bitta discipline to sort out the former, and then address the latter. Of course it'd be mega-painful, but if that wasn't a motivation to bear down on the task at hand, what was?

One woulda thought a humongously prosperous country like America mighta figured that out without going to college.

 

Attempting to create an outdoor bubble for the NFL and MLB will be daunting enough, but the added logistics to cover college athletes could well prove to be bloody impossible.

Even if the student in student-athlete is kinda coughed out when spoken at some schools, they're all gonna have to spend significant time on campus.

How does a school handle that in a practical manner?

 

 

Full marks to the SEC, Big XII, and ACC for trying to find a way to keep as much of their fall plans intact as they can, but really, they've gotta be joining the Big Ten and Pac-12 in making contingency plans for Spring football.

There are a few wacky proposals out there, and the thought of starting a football season in wintry conditions instead of finishing one that way may seem bizarre, as well. Still, the cold-weather schools have facilities to handle it. The hang-up could simply be program overload when fall sports are played simultaneously with spring sports.

 

It sure as hell beats what might happen if the current virus surge hasn't been reined in and a player actually dies from it.

Before dismissing that thought as extreme, remember that college teams aren't limited to the 53-man roster that the NFL is. It's simple exponential math to project that a larger lot of players makes even the simplest protections against being infected a managerial nightmare.

As that sage social observer Marilyn Manson so eloquently drew a key distinction ...

 

It does only take one to become a perspective-changing tragedy.

Given the probable scenarios for teeing it up in the fall, though, moving the whole shebang to springtime is likely the better option.

Besides, it gives some of medicine's brighter minds more time to come up with something to better battle the pandemic.

Putting the developmental and under-the-radar Spring League aside, the move might also provide an indication of what sorta interest spring football actually draws.

 

There might actually be one.

Because as the situation is right now, if it doesn't improve in some drastic manner, playing a college schedule in the next few months is becoming more and more of a pipe dream.