Chris Fowler put out a thing it's being seriously discussed.

Season would be February to May.

4/14/2020 11:08:57 PM

That would be a tough sell. Interferes with college basketball tournament season, not to mention college baseball, early MLB season, and most if not all of the golf anyone actually cares about (which is always on weekends)

4/14/2020 11:45:27 PM

So they delay the 2020 season 6 months, ok. What about the 2021 season? Delayed 2020 postseason in June, regular 2021 season starts 2 months later? Basically a 1 month off-season for football players to get their bodies right? I don't see it.

4/15/2020 12:17:15 AM

^right. that's why i don't see many leagues being able to significantly delay their seasons. too much interference with the following season (plus recruiting and all that other shit too)

[Edited on April 15, 2020 at 6:30 AM. Reason : but in general...yeah, that sounds fun]

4/15/2020 6:30:23 AM

It wouldn’t be a tough sell because college football pays the bills for nearly every college athletics program. Universities will prioritize having a football season over every other sport

4/15/2020 7:07:50 AM

And as far as "well this and this are going on then", look, everything is going to try to run at the same time. It's going to be that or you get whole seasons cancelled.

Trump held a meeting with all the U.S. sports league commissioners about 10 days ago (NCAA was not on it) and was talking about gear up to get back running in August. Which first, is only hopeful, but also I doubt you're seeing the NBA, baseball, or NHL before then if that's what the optimist in the room was stating. So the best-case scenario is everything gets crammed together in the fall...with no fans.

And I was reading one article last night that was painting how desperate the MLB plan was to just run all their games in Arizona by talking about how the logistics of that from the standpoint of the players and all the support staff being in constant quarantine would be, but one doctor said you won't even have fans attending games until a vaccine is developed, which is 12 to 18 months from now is the current estimate. The other option is we go as normal, thing will flame out by late fall, but in the meantime 2 million people die.

On the bright side, none of the meaningless end-of-year bowl games would be played because no one will be travelling in May.

[Edited on April 15, 2020 at 7:49 AM. Reason : /]

4/15/2020 7:22:23 AM

^^ Colleges maybe, but cable companies have other broadcast rights, obligations, and more that would contractually conflict. If the seasons did overlap the games would almost certainly either not be aired, or broadcast on some alternative other station. Amplify that times several hundred for just the D1 schools, then add in pro sports leagues, and that becomes an absolute logistical nightmare that would be so difficult to hash out that I guarantee you would result in several games not being televised.

4/15/2020 9:29:13 AM

WE have a whole network

4/15/2020 10:10:49 AM

^^ This "overlap" is happening as the sports leagues that are supposed to be playing now are going to cram into the back half of this year as much as possible anyway. You're going to get a very clear indication of where sports rank in comparison to one another according to their broadcast partners and venues. I wouldn't be surprised to see whatever ranks bottom in a market with NBA/NHL/MLB/MLS you see some noon games on weekdays. I've been following what's going on with racing a lot, and one series is Supercross which is in baseball and football stadiums in the first 4 months of the year when usually nothing else is going on in those places. The organizers are in absolute "we will race 17 events!" mode and have pushed the remainder of the series to the fall, which makes me think they have to race 17 events in order to receive their full TV contract money from NBC Sports, but even if they go to places like Oakland/St. Louis/San Diego/the old Las Vegas stadium on repeat as those stadiums have no anchor tenant, there's scheduling concerns you don't think about they're going to have to work around, like concerts for example.

The one thing that is absolutely clear is that colleges and their athletics directors from their perspective have to play a football season, because football and the TV rights fund everything else they do with the exception of men's basketball. So if it comes down to no season or truncated fall season versus spring football, what do you think they're going to do? You seriously think for as much as CBS and ESPN and Fox pay the major conferences, they're going to pay out the same money for a 9-week season of college games compared to 14 weeks or whatever it normally is? That's all buried in contract details that will never become public but I can't imagine the TV networks' lawyers were that stupid to ignore force majeure events.

If they do have a fall season as scheduled, the coaches have already lost spring practice. And this is all presuming that universities have fall semesters as scheduled with students in dorms.

[Edited on April 15, 2020 at 10:21 AM. Reason : /]

4/15/2020 10:12:54 AM

While the logistics of tv and all that matter...I think the logistics of having a football season in the winter-summer and trying then to play another regular season in the fall (with recruiting, training, spring practice which I guess would be held in the summer, etc, etc) is gonna prove to be more challenging than working out the tv deals.

[Edited on April 15, 2020 at 10:31 AM. Reason : I also have no doubt that the NCAA is fine sacrificing player safety to pull it off ]

4/15/2020 10:23:38 AM

^ A completely cancelled football season this fall is estimated to cost every public university in ACC/Big 12/Big 10/SEC/Pac-12 $78 million on average per a USA Today analysis published yesterday.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2020/04/14/college-football-major-programs-could-see-billions-revenue-go-away/2989466001/

4/15/2020 10:50:13 AM

Yeah I get the incentive to do it. I question the feasibility of actually pulling it off.

4/15/2020 11:08:47 AM

New plan. A lot of states will be able to go into phase 1 tomorrow which means they could open up some sports but its still april and by may 1, you would have 29 states in phase 1 and some of those states in phase 2.

4/16/2020 7:29:20 PM

Dynasty -- we may have a whole network but that doesn't solve the issue of ~6 games each Saturday unless they either add a ton of Friday games or play from 6 AM til after midnight. On top of ZERO spring training? If we do have football it'll be with simplified schemes at the very least for the first few weeks or more.

4/16/2020 7:35:20 PM

Attitudes are different about it where you depending on the area's cultural thernometer. You can't have a pro sports league without California (see the Governor's remarks a couple weeks back) or New York (where deaths have been the worst).

4/17/2020 2:06:34 AM

Of course you can. Theres nothing preventing those teams from playing games in different states. Think about the pelicans/hornets in OKC after Katrina. MLB already has a deal in the works with the governors of Florida and Arizona. Half of the league will play in one state's spring training facilities and the other half will play in the other state. The governors can even make them essential like they did for WWE.

4/17/2020 2:27:58 AM

California State University system have cancelled in-person classes for the fall with what will be a few exceptions (as far as their marketing names used in sports, this would be Fresno State, San Diego State, Long Beach State, etc.). UCLA and Cal-Berkeley are in the University of California system but would probably be following the same guidance.

(If a university by the way says they're in lockdown but that does not apply to the football team, that ranks as the biggest crock of shit ever.)

The University of North Carolina system (which includes N.C. State) has said at the moment they will be open in the fall.

5/13/2020 1:51:05 PM

It pretty much only takes a couple schools to refuse to play to effectively cancel the season for everyone. That’s what we saw with duke refusing to show up to the acc tourney (not that they cancelled all of CBB, but for the acc)

That’s why I’m so pessimistic about a season. It takes a lot of cooperation to get a season. It takes just one or two schools (or refs or whatever) to refuse to show up to end it for everybody.

5/13/2020 8:27:24 PM

^ Where there's a will, there's a way. I think you're going to see a lot of athletics directors jumping through as many hoops as they can to make a football season work, and probably silent pressure from the state's governor to make it so, election year and all.

[Edited on May 14, 2020 at 9:02 AM. Reason : /]

5/14/2020 9:01:46 AM

I know the Big10 is discussing a shortened season, playing only the conference games and starting in late October.

5/14/2020 10:05:48 AM

Anybody have DD's conference-only record year by year handy to post in here?

5/14/2020 10:55:13 AM

0-8
3-5
3-5
3-5
6-2
5-3
1-7

5/14/2020 11:11:13 AM

I would be shocked if there were ANY fall college athletics this year. The schools will be exposing the athletes to way too much risk to justify bringing so many people together needed to play and broadcast these games. If the schools are seriously considering playing without fans, they are basically admitting that they are willing to expose these (unpaid) students to risk which they are not willing to have the general public exposed to. And once the first student contracts the virus from one of these games, the university opens itself up to potential litigation.

On the other hand, I do think we will have professional fall sports, in some form.

5/14/2020 12:38:06 PM

I agree that it’s gonna be really hard to have fall sports. I wouldn’t be surprised if some players would refuse to play. Probably not a majority or anything, but I would expect some to not play if they tried to go forward with a season.

5/14/2020 3:14:57 PM

but they’re YOUNG and HEALTHY

5/14/2020 3:16:49 PM

If and only if students are on campus and going to class there will be college football.

will get messy if some State's schools are in class and some arent

[Edited on May 17, 2020 at 7:28 AM. Reason : f]

5/17/2020 7:26:08 AM

talk about how major conferences or even the NCAA might collapse and big football schools might start a new league.

5/17/2020 1:44:38 PM

Quote :

"but they’re YOUNG and HEALTHY"

And this whole thing is no worse than the common cold.

5/17/2020 6:51:29 PM

Linemen aren’t exactly the fitting image of health, while being strong they are for the most part obese.

Also while the students might not be as threatened by the virus, what about all the coaches and support staff? Some of these coaches are pretty old, got in much worse shape after their playing days (remember Mark Mangino), and work hella long days. I could see one of them catching the virus and passing away from it. Family members could then sue the school and conference for continuing with the season, knowing full well the dangers of the virus. Particularly since the Cal State system have proactively said they aren’t having in-person classes. While a large majority (well over 90%) will recover, it is still more deadly than the flu due to a lack of having a vaccine and not yet achieving herd immunity. I’ve had a co-worker who had it and for her it was essentially a case of the flu, however I have had patients with it who have died from the virus and those that have recovered have had significant after effects such as nerve damage and severe weakness. One of my patients was only 38, was on a ventilator for 3 weeks, spent 4 weeks in the hospital and another week in a rehab hospital.

5/17/2020 9:58:25 PM

Quote :

"Linemen aren’t exactly the fitting image of health, while being strong they are for the most part obese."

You need weight to push weight.

Quote :

"One of my patients was only 38, was on a ventilator for 3 weeks, spent 4 weeks in the hospital and another week in a rehab hospital."

My sister is a nurse and is working in a covid hall right now. Most of her friends in her social circle are republicans. Lately, she's been posting a ton about the current situation and that people are still getting sick and passing away due to covid, but all of her friends reply to her on FB by saying shit like "I heard that it was all a big hoax and that healthcare professionals are getting laid off due to lack of work."

[Edited on May 18, 2020 at 10:02 AM. Reason : a]

5/18/2020 9:57:28 AM

There are healthcare professionals being laid off. Many hospitals cancelled all elective surgeries and stuff and some of those people were furloughed/laid off. Hospitals are for-profit businesses and when they cancel all the procedures that make them money, they are going to make cuts to lower expenses.

5/18/2020 10:18:01 AM

They were referring to covid staff. GOP ppl aren't willing to understand the difference between the two.

[Edited on May 18, 2020 at 10:55 AM. Reason : m]

5/18/2020 10:30:55 AM

Apparently the NCAA has considered shifting both football and basketball slightly back in a way so that the seasons don't overlap

[Edited on May 18, 2020 at 1:50 PM. Reason : s]

5/18/2020 1:50:32 PM

prolly bad for bball as it will cause scheduling problems with March Madness.

5/18/2020 8:03:15 PM

If they're pushing basketball back because football is moving back it makes me think it was something TV requested.

^^^^ My mom does the books for a large not-for-profit system in the state and they're losing money hand over fist.

[Edited on May 18, 2020 at 9:51 PM. Reason : /]

5/18/2020 9:50:40 PM

I bet the CEO of said not-for-profit hospital system makes at least 7 figures a year. Hospitals abuse the non-profit laws more than anyone, even mega churches. I have no sympathy for them.

I can't imagine the NCAA moving football to interfere with basketball since the NCAA gets pretty much their entire budget from the NCAA tournament.

5/18/2020 10:15:49 PM

Just put Ohio State, Clemson, and the entire SEC into a 16-team tourney to decide the CFP, Go Vawls!

5/18/2020 10:19:03 PM

From what I've heard about it, the plan included pushing the entire thing back, so that March Madness would happen in April/May depending on time frame. Not a guarantee, but it's been discussed.

5/18/2020 11:32:40 PM

I'm callng it. Theres not going to be a full basketball season. Too many people involved, too often, with too much travel and its indoors. The only thing fanless football has going for it is that its outdoors but that seems unlikely too.

I think if we see a basketball season at all, it will be severely shortened, or will start and then get canceled after a certain number of players test positive.

5/19/2020 3:09:46 AM

More games in b-ball, so yeah it’ll be easier to shorten that season than football. Both will probably be shortened.

5/19/2020 11:49:32 AM

Yeah, football will be so much safer, with crowds of up to 100k people sitting shoulder to shoulder!

5/19/2020 1:05:06 PM

^^ what I've heard is that it will just be conference games starting in January.

5/19/2020 1:44:58 PM

I kind of wonder about the practicality of reduced capacity events. I was wanting to go to the Indy 500 which is more than double the size of any college football game, but I'm wondering what it's going to look like.

1.) It's not just seating, it's walking in the concourse, using the bathrooms, getting concessions, entry into the arena/stadium.
2.) Is social distancing all or nothing? If I go with my wife, social distancing is stupid because we sleep together. But apply that to my kids as well, they'd be young and I'm not staying 6 feet away from them in an environment with strangers, again anything they have I do as well and vice versa. Well, then apply this to roommates. Or fraternities. Soon you're walking down a slope of who can sit together and who can't. What's stopping 6 buddies from ordering tickets and saying they live together?
3.) Once everyone is in their seats, how are they going to stop people from wandering? Are they planning on having a bunch of roaming cops or yellow shirters, which means more people to account for? (This point more than any just begs for bullshit to happen. Either the social distancing in a stadium environment quickly becomes a fraud, or you have to havr some measure of enforcement. )
4.) If I wanted to watch a sports event alone and not talk to anyone, I'd stay and watch it at home. There's also no way in hell for these things they'll allow tailgating if they're taking all these measures inside the stadiums.

[Edited on May 19, 2020 at 2:39 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2020 2:37:25 PM

Yeah reduced capacity stuff doesn’t make sense to me for the reasons you said. Bathrooms, concessions, etc. Also, good luck telling tailgaters to social distance.

Plus, You’re still not just talking about players and coaches. There’s game officials, television and radio production, event staff...band and cheerleaders? I mean, it’s an obvious observation. But there’s a lot more that goes into a game than just 80 players on each team and coaching staffs

5/19/2020 3:12:14 PM

I don't see reduced capacity making much sense honestly.

If you have reduced capacity, you still have to have staff, and lots of staff. You need people working the gate, metal detectors, concession workers, janitors cleaning, police officers, ushers, parking lot workers, etc.

So you still have to pay all those people, make sure none are sick and all have the proper protective wear. Let's say with spacing(gaps between groups, every other row empty) you can sell 25-30% of your seats, is that really going to offset the cost of all those staff members? If you close the gates to only have 1 or 2 open and close concessions, are you really generating much money just from ticket sales?

If college stadiums aren't full, at what point is playing those games losing the colleges money? How much is NC State going to lose going to the Troy game? Is Delaware going to eat the cost to travel to play us?

You see schools like ND and UofSC coming out and proclaiming they'll be on campus in August, so clearly schools are going to try and make sure football happens in the Fall.

5/19/2020 3:52:55 PM

why not just do it Bundesliga style and keep the fans at home?

5/19/2020 4:49:40 PM

Quote :

"fanless football"

Quote :

"Yeah, football will be so much safer, with crowds of up to 100k people sitting shoulder to shoulder!"

Crazy how devastating the effects of not reading one word can be

5/19/2020 5:18:36 PM

All superfluous things from football games should disappear if we're concerned about public health and limiting capacity to say 25% and the only reason these games are being played is TV rights fees. Superfluous would include the band, dance team, and cheerleaders. You could probably get rid of half the cameras easily that get setup for the more major contests. No sideline reporters. No one allowed on sidelines except referees, coaches, players, and maybe a half dozen trainers/support staff or whatever. No marketing people that run stuff on the field during break or up in the concourses. No alumni dinners or university functions in the run-up to the game on the side.

[Edited on May 19, 2020 at 6:11 PM. Reason : /]

5/19/2020 6:10:32 PM

^i mean, I’m not disagreeing that all those measures are good. But also at some point you just don’t play the games, right? Of course they wanna look for every option for playing because of the money. But I mean...if it’s so bad that we are cutting *that* much (which is all reasonable imo) then why are we ok with 25% capacity, players and teams traveling to games, sharing locker rooms and bathrooms, refs traveling, etc. Especially players that aren’t getting paid. Pro sports is way different imo. I get it, we wanna play the games. And tons of money is a stake.

[Edited on May 19, 2020 at 7:26 PM. Reason : H]

5/19/2020 7:24:26 PM

Right, but view this like politics. There's a huge unstated goal that everyone wants for reason X. (In this case, they want college football because if they don't get it, they don't get their TV rights fees and athletic departments around the country collapse) so they're going to frame the narrative in such a way to ensure that college football happens.

It's no different than what the UFC is doing now. UFC has to run shows, because if they don't, their owners Endeavor can't pay the interest payments on their debt they ran up to buy UFC and would be forced to sell part of UFC when they only own 51% to start with, meaning they would lose control. So Dana White's out there saying this is all bullshit and setting up a Fight Island out there somewhere undisclosed. Doing so means they get all their money from ESPN and financial crisis averted.

Could be worse, they could be the Carolina Mudcats or Durham Bulls that don't have any TV rights to fall back on.

[Edited on May 19, 2020 at 11:01 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2020 10:43:09 PM