College Football is in doubt for 2020

College football is a major part of our sports culture in this country. Right now, the college game is in jeopardy of not happening in 2020 due to the complications of planning around the COVID—19 virus.

With the conferences probably going the route of a conference only schedule it only buys the conferences a number of weeks. Teams around the country are reporting positive COVID-19 cases, so the planning that goes into college football is becoming more difficult with each day that passes.

The IVY League is getting out ahead of the curve by cancelling all sports for the fall. Some of you may say, “it’s the IVY League. They are not Power 5. The competition isn’t like the Big Ten, SEC, or Pac-12.” Well, whether you want to admit it or not, the IVY league has some of biggest leaders in this country. What the IVY League decides to do in terms of academics and sports does capture the attention of people in other leagues.

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When the IVY League decided on Wednesday to cancel its fall season it’s easy to imagine the Power 5 Commissioners looking at that decision with a bit of interest. I will not be surprised in the least if a Power 5 Conference does the same as the IVY League.

The other aspect that has continually annoyed me is the thought that if the schools have no students on campus how can we justify having football players or any other athlete on campus competing?

There is a moral question to having athletes on campus, but no regular students. The other part of this that is raised if only athletes on are campus is simply this. Is college football a business or is it about amateurism as the NCAA likes to say? Anybody that follows college football or college athletics in general knows the answer to this. It’s a rhetorical question for sure.

Parents of athletes have been asking their athletes coaches how they plan to keep young athlete safe. I know of a few Pac-12 schools that receive daily messages about how they plan to keep student-athletes safe from the virus.

College administrators, college coaches, and other people affiliated with college football have been all over social media trying to get fans to “mask up”. These type of announcements have put the predicament of not having a college football season in the direct line of sight for the fans. At least you would think it would.

With wearing a mask being such a political thing now it might not work for the college football power people. It should be an easy thing to do, but it’s not for some reason.

We are getting to the point in the year where college football media days happen and the beginning of summer/fall camp happens. If there are no significant changes to what is going on with the virus and college football then the idea of a normal season is in serious trouble.

The idea of having college football in the spring which has mostly been looked at as a last resort has gained a little more traction, but now you get into the discussion of what do you do with the NFL eligible players? The NFL has not said it’s moving the NFL Draft to a different date. Obviously, the NFL may change what they are doing, but we need to go with the information we have right now.

As stated earlier, the discussion of just playing conference games is only buying us time. Decisions have to be made and have to made soon.

We all want college football to happen. However, at what cost? What is college football worth to us in 2020?