The sports world came to a screeching halt a couple weeks ago. At this point, there is no clarity on when it will start up again. Postseason tournaments for college winter sports were cancelled. So were entire spring seasons. The NBA and NHL are in precarious spots when it comes to completing their seasons. MLB is making contingencies on how to execute an abbreviated season that seems unlikely to begin before June.
Fall sports, most notably the NFL and college football seasons, have not been on the radar so much yet. Their offseason activities are all that has been impacted so far. But there have been worst-case estimates by public health experts that the COVID-19 virus epidemic could last up to a year or longer. Others say we could be in the clear by summer. Again, there is just no clarity here. Obviously much will depend on how, as an entire society, we follow the recommendations to avoid the continued spread of the virus. Most people seem to have got the message. Unfortunately, some have not. We can’t even begin to estimate how many people are carrying the virus right now due to very limited testing abilities. So everything discussed looking forward comes with an obvious caveat: we simply don’t know yet what the timeline for this epidemic will be.
College football is an enterprise that brings in an estimated $6.5 billion dollars per academic year. Divided amongst all FBS schools, that is about $51 million each. Obviously that money is not divided evenly, but suffice to say that football-related revenues make up the lion’s share when it comes to funding entire athletics departments FBS-wide. Take away football money, and college athletics overall becomes a shell of what it is today. So it would stand to reason that it would take something truly catastrophic to willingly cancel a season, or even a portion of a season.
With that, college football can’t, and won’t, push back its season to play well into January if the season can’t begin by September. To do so, it would have to compete head-to-head with the NFL playoffs, not to mention face a litany of logistical and scheduling nightmares. Not happening. If play had to be called off into September due to the epidemic, but was able to resume by October, then a partial season may be feasible. Since FBS college football is essentially run by the individual conferences rather than the NCAA, each conference would likely want to preserve its conference games in order to best fulfill their TV agreements with the networks. That means almost the entirety of non-conference games would have to be scrapped.
For most teams, it would simply mean crossing off the first three games on their schedule, plus a bye week. But there are still a handful non-conference games played after September that would need be cancelled to accommodate the shortened schedule, which would have a domino effect on scheduling. Independents would really be in a bind. Notre Dame, thanks to it’s 5-games per season agreement with the ACC might be able to manage, since the ACC only plays 8 conference games and could probably find a way to accommodate a part-time conference member. But the Irish would still lose their annual games with Stanford, USC, and possibly Navy. Other independents without such an arrangement, like BYU and Army, will really have a tough time finding 9 games.
A 9-game schedule, vs the usual 12-games, would also impact the integrity in determining who the best teams are; in particular, who is most worthy of being in the 4-team Playoff. Also, how many wins will a team need for bowl-eligibility? You’d probably need a lot of 4-5 teams in order to be able to play all of the bowl games. Maybe even a 3-6 team here and there. Lots of questions to answer. Questions I would not be surprised to learn that some conferences have already, very quietly, begun to discuss.
If the pandemic has not subsided in time to start the season by the first Saturday in October (Oct 3rd), then I think we’d have to imagine the unthinkable: no college football in 2020. Of course, if we get to this point and things have not improved enough to resume our regular lives, then as a country, and globally, we will have far greater problems to worry about than no football.
College Football Analyst
Mike is a Baltimore native living in Portland, OR since 2007. He currently runs his own business specializing in video production and online marketing. Prior to that he was a legal technology consultant, worked for 9 years at Johns Hopkins University and served 6 years in the Air Force. He also enjoys travel, food, beer, and is a volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society.