The coronavirus pandemic is still raging from coast to coast, nearly 4 million U.S. cases have been confirmed and well over 142,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.
But this is the United States, so one vital question for many is: how will it affect the college football season?
As with so much about the virus, nothing can be certain.
Already, reports the Associated Press, the pandemic “has led to the cancellation or postponement of more than 300 Division I games so far, and how much, if any, college football is played hinges on whether the surging number of virus cases can be tamped down.”
Importantly, it’s not just about which teams will play and what happens on the field; ticket sales and TV contracts for big football games provide necessary funding for most colleges’ entire athletic programs.
“A team can play a Power Five conference foe on the road and earn as much as $2 million, often enough to keep other programs afloat,” the AP says.
Anticipating a truncated or cancelled season, some on Twitter are blaming President Trump:
“While the NCAA has released Covid-19 protocols for student-athletes, the number of new cases is still high in several states,” reports the Sporting News. “How those numbers fluctuate in late July and August will determine whether it’s safe to run a full-contact fall camp geared toward getting college football athletes ready for a season.”
A 9- or 10-game season “looks like the best-case scenario,” Sporting News says, suggesting the first games would come in early October.
“The Big Ten and Pac-12 moved to a [9-game] conference-only schedule for 2020, and the assumption is that the model works for those conferences and produces a legitimate conference race between two divisions,” Sporting News says.
Even so, some states are already moving toward calling off the entire season.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) wrote on Tuesday to administrators at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State, urging them to suspend all contact sports this fall, soccer as well as football, reports the Albuquerque Journal.
There’s also the possibility of a spring football season, for at least some of the 124 schools comprising the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
