College Football 2020

Just so there is no misunderstanding:

• I really hope that football – – college and professional – – can happen in the Fall of 2020.

That is what I want to happen; that is what would happen if I ran across a magic lamp and the genie inside gave me one sports wish that it would grant.  Unfortunately, I think the chances of my wish coming true are diminishing week by week.

Maybe – just maybe – the NFL can throw enough money and people resources at the testing/tracing/PPE issues to put on a season.  After all, that is a business entity that rakes in $15B per year and none of the owners of the franchises could be fairly described as “strapped for resources”.  I would like to hold on to that possibility as “a good thought” for today – – because there are not a lot of other good thoughts floating through my mind.

I have said before that college football is in much more danger than the NFL simply because the costs involved in keeping a football team healthy enough to perform are significant and colleges do not have the kinds of fiscal resources that the NFL has.  The more I think about it, the less sanguine I become about seeing college football in 2020.

In its attempt to restart its season, the NBA – – and the WNBA – – have resorted to a “Bubble Strategy” wherein players and coaches are isolated from the outside world and medical testing is done repeatedly and frequently.  The NBA can afford to do that because it has deep pockets and because NBA rosters are small.

College football teams have about 100 players and when you add in the coaches and the trainers and the rest of the staff, there are probably 150 people who would need to be “Bubbled Up”.  That represents an expense level that is not acceptable and so the college football team will need to join with the rest of the university community by living in dorms and going to classes which is the antithesis of being in a bubble.  And for those schools that will go “totally online” for the Fall Semester, what sort of optic does it provide if students are not allowed back on campus, but the football team is?

Moreover, the closer we get to what would be a “typical” college football season, the more I begin to think that there is no good reason to do such a thing.  As I said above, the NFL is a $15B per year – or more – business enterprise and the players collectively earn something in the neighborhood of $7B a year.  Even before COVID-19 did the species jump to infect humans, NFL players risked their bodies and their long-term health to collect the salaries offered to them.  One could argue about the rationality of such decisions by the players, but enough of them decided to take those risks to allow the NFL to put on its show year after year.

So, in a sense, COVID-19 is an “added-layer of risk” for an NFL player in 2020.  In addition to all the potential orthopedic health hazards and the potential for CTE or other brain dysfunctions down the road, the NFL player in 2020 must factor in the contagion called COVID-19 into his “health versus salary calculus”.  However, college football players have no such calculus to perform for a single obvious reason:

• College football players do not get paid to play football.

College players only have their scholarships – plus room and board and Pell Grants – to balance against their health risks which includes COVID-19 in 2020.  And if we look objectively at all the scholarship football players in the US, what percentage of those players seriously value those scholarships as educational assets?  If I set a prop bet at 50% of the players, would you take OVER or UNDER?

Irrational Me wants college football for hedonistic reasons; I really enjoy watching and following college football.  Rational Me recognizes that college players are taking on added risk by playing this year for no added benefit – and that makes exactly no sense.

Rational Me thinks this is going to be an unsatisfactory Fall in 2020…

And just for the record, I do not find any soothing qualities in any of the pronouncements that there might be college football in the Spring of 2021.  If such a thing were to happen, it would be discordant – – sort of like a 60-game MLB season is going to be discordant.  College football belongs in the Fall not in the Spring.  Having said that, college football does not belong in the Fall at the expense of added risk to the health of the college football players.

Focusing on reality here, even if some schools find ways to play some games this Fall, it is not going to be the “same game”.  Michigan will not have 110,000 fans in their stadium for home games; lots of games will happen with no one in the stands; the TV networks will add recorded crowd noise to their telecasts; the product in 2020 – if there is a product – is going to be ersatz at best.

So, maybe the best thing for the college football mavens to do is to give fans the awful dose of castor oil and get it over with.  The taste of the castor oil will go away, and fans will go through the multiple levels of grieving for the loss of college football.  Just call if off…

There was news yesterday that the Rose Parade for Jan 1, 2021 has been canceled.  That decision was not made because there is a shortage of roses; that decision was made because of the potentially disastrous public health repercussions from holding the parade.  So, ask yourself this:

• If the Rose Parade is a public health risk not worth taking, would a Rose Bowl Game played in the same venue make sense?

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this item in his column in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot recently.  There is plenty of blame to be handed out to scientists, medical folks and politicians of all persuasions regarding COVID-19; this comment points the finger at another group that needs some shaming:

“Stand-up guy: Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle, a U.Va. man, stuck out his neck to make a point about America’s issues with COVID-19. ‘Sports,’ he said, ‘are like the reward of a functioning society. If there aren’t sports, it’s going to be because people are not wearing masks. We need help from the general public.’”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………