It’s becoming clearer and clearer how utterly messy the outlook is for college football. A month ago, there appeared to be some rather unified blocks, all trending towards canceling the season. Now, it’s anyone’s guess. So, let’s go through this block by block, story by story, and try to guess which way it points regarding fall football. We’ll grade them on a five-part scale: points towards no, leans towards no, no indication, leans towards yes, points towards yes
UConn Canceled Its Football Season
Guess: No indication on whether college football happens this fall
UConn, newly an independent in football, won’t be playing this fall. Two months ago, this would have been news. Now, it’s a byproduct of what we already knew. The Power Five leagues are limiting or eliminating nonconference games. UConn is regionally isolated from the rest of the FBS. Connecticut has been more aggressive in its travel-quarantine rules than other states. UConn’s football program’s continued existence is not exactly a point of pride for UConn. There’s no incentive for UConn to try to force it, and college football can certainly happen without UConn.
The Big Ten Has a Schedule, and a Lot of Caveats
Guess: Leans towards yes, college football happening this fall
Kevin Warren has been careful about what he says. He’s made it abundantly clear that no scheduling announcement is a guarantee of Big Ten football happening this fall.
That said, they did release a schedule, with dates on it. And while they said they’re willing to bump games back and move them around, this is still a step forward when they could have called it quits, signaling a desire to hold onto the possibility of fall football. I believe Northwestern, Michigan State, and Rutgers are all currently on hold as they assess and/or combat the severity of coronavirus outbreaks within their programs. If that status, in early August, isn’t enough to cancel the season, it’s fair to start asking what would.
Coronavirus Deaths Are Rising Nationally, and Cases Remain High
Guess: Leans towards no college football happening this fall
Coronavirus deaths are rising, and if they keep rising for a month, as the total case count did, we’ve got another week or so before the daily counts start leveling off. This is bad.
Also bad is that cases remain high. They’ve dipped a bit recently, but that may have more to do with Hurricane Isaias reducing testing capacity than an actual reduction of infections. The fact cases remain this high indicates that deaths will remain high, which is, again, bad.
Applying this to college football: The worse the collective national outbreak, the less likely it is college football happens this fall. If we were to turn a corner on cases, that would create more nuance (“the pandemic is still bad” vs. “the pandemic is getting better”), but at this point, it doesn’t look good.
Joe Biden Is About to Announce His VP Nominee
Guess: Points towards yes, college football happening this fall
What I’m about to say isn’t intended to be some harsh critique of the media. It’s a natural happening, the byproduct of economic forces that have naturally arisen—New York being the center of national media, the consumer consciousness viewing everything through a political prism, short attention spans on the part of consumers.
Natural or not, though, the reality is that the weight of the coronavirus on our national consciousness does not depend wholly on the severity of the coronavirus. It depends on what other stories are out there eating up space. And we’re about to get a big story in our country’s most rabid sport: presidential elections.
Later this week, we’re going to learn who Joe Biden’s running mate is. It’s going to be a big story. We’re going to hear a lot about this person for at least a week or two. And that will take oxygen away from coverage of the coronavirus, in turn reducing the national pressure on collegiate athletic programs to not play football.
Students Are Returning to School…and Campus
Guess: Points towards no college football happening this fall
On the other hand, students returning to school is a big national story, and people are going to care how it goes. We’d be right to expect a lot of continued coverage of this, especially if the presidential campaign retreats into the rearview mirror for a bit following the blue team’s VP announcement.
More significantly, the return of students to college campuses seems destined to lead to at least a few, and possibly a lot of, local coronavirus outbreaks. If Columbus or South Bend or Tuscaloosa or Norman has a massive outbreak, it will significantly raise pressure on conferences to surrender the hope of fall football, and it’s not just those four towns. To some degree, it’s a numbers game: There are a lot of colleges out there. Even if each Power Five school has a 95% chance of avoiding a severe outbreak, there will be a few which don’t, and that will be bad.
The NCAA Does Not Want to Be Involved
Guess: Leans towards yes, college football happening this fall
This isn’t hugely meaningful, but the separation the Power Five have created from the NCAA with regard to college football is a big development that leaves the decision out of the hands of one central power, making it more likely that, for example, the Big Ten and Pac-12 sit out while the other three leagues play on. Of course, the NCAA does have to make a decision regarding the FCS Playoffs, but they can wait on that for a couple more months, realistically. They’re not involved with the meaningful decisions at this point, which means it’s every league for itself, which raises the probability of at least a few leagues moving ahead with games.
Oklahoma’s Football Team Keeps Testing Negative, and Is Scheduled to Play August 29th
Guess: Leans towards yes, college football happening this fall
Oklahoma’s held onto the Missouri State game, and even moved it up to Week Zero. The testing could change any week in Norman, but there aren’t a lot of weeks left. Even if that game is played while other leagues delay their start, that doesn’t mean the season won’t be canceled, but it does start the ball rolling. And for whatever precedent the MLB’s worth, a rolling ball seems to be a powerful force.
***
Overall, we entirely don’t know, and that includes the people deciding. But, as I wrote last week, it looks a lot more likely than it did a month ago that we’ll have college football this fall, even in an altered form. If I were to choose the most probable individual scenario, my guess would be that the Big 12 will play a few nonconference games at the end of the month and the beginning of September while everyone else delays further. At The Barking Crow specifically, we’re going to hold off on building our college football model for at least another week or two.
We’ll see.
