College Football 2020

[airboy]

The two conferences I care about: the ACC and the SEC have announced their plans.

ACC will have 10 conference games and allow one extra non-conference game for a team within their State.  This was done to allow some of the normal rivalry games:
Georgia - Georgia Tech
Clemson - South Carolina
Florida - Florida State
Louisville - Kentucky

Then the SEC came out with a schedule of 10 conference games killing the allowed rivalry game the ACC would allow.

The SEC said each school will have to determine if their will be fans, and if so how many and by what choice mechanic.

Overall, this season will kill intercollegiate sports for a lot of small schools.  Why?  It is a little complicated so bear with me.

First, pretty much every college sports team loses money except Football and Men's Basketball.
Second, the NCAA tourney was killed for Men's Basketball in 2020 - which killed a ton of money for a lot of smaller schools.
Third, Federal law mandates "equalivant opportunities" for men and women to participate in intercollegiate sports.
Fourth, medium size schools make money playing away football games and for their conference getting a split of the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament.

All of the power 5 conferences have pretty much eliminated non-conference games.  That kills a huge proportion of revenue for an awful lot of schools.

Next, it is uncertain how many fans will be allowed to see home college football games.  That attendance is a large revenue stream.

So combine the lost money from killing the 2020 Men's Basketball Tourney, killing nonconference football games, and potentially killing a substantial portion (or all) ticket revenue for football games means a tremendous cash drain on athletic budgets.

An awful lot of intercollegiate sports programs are going to die.  Many nonrevenue sports will be axed because the cash cows of basketball and football will be hamstrung.

My wife suggested just allowing current students to see College Football games this season.  From a health perspective it makes a lot of sense since the young are highly unlikely to be seriously ill from covid.  Also, if only the students see the games then you can space them out in the stadium.  This will never happen since students are a trivial part of ticket revenue.  Big donors get the best seats and pay big bucks for them.

Still, I welcome getting to watch college sports again - at least on TV.

[SirAndrewD]

I'm hoping the season happens.  But even if it does it'll have an asterisk next to it regardless of results. 

I had high hopes for Auburn to have an offensive resurgence with Morris at OC.    He did great things at Clemson but was in over his head at Arkansas. 

Nix with a year under his belt and Tank Bigsby coming in were highlights for me.  I hope I get to see them for what they're worth. 

War Eagle anyway.

[airboy]

SEC teams at an auction for the rights to play Vandy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiK4aQSg-AE

[Labbug]

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/uconn-cancels-football-season-amid-pandemic-fears

[airboy]

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/uconn-cancels-football-season-amid-pandemic-fears

UConn is an independent in football.  Who was going to play them this year?  The power 5 conferences effectively eliminated nonconference games.  Some of the smaller conferences cancelled football.  UConn seems like they are trying to score PR points in a season where they could not schedule any opponents.

Their "marquee game" that would have generated the most money was against UNC - and the ACC cancelled that game.

[solops]

You are right on about the money. Football, and to a lesser extent basketball, fund all of a university's sports, men's and women's. And small schools would play big ones just because their cut of the box office was the biggest cash inflow they had for the year. So, you are right. A lot of sports programs will be cancelled and some schools will be dropping all their sports. How severe the fallout will be may depend on the fan response to the broadcast only format for big schools. I bet there is a real scramble to determine what advertising rates should be. I am not sure it is all a bad thing. It may be that some programs continue just because the kids really want to play and do so without big money backing. We may see a move away from a university semi-pro system and back to real amateur sports at some schools.

[airboy]

Midwest Athletic Conference cancelled all Fall Sports.

If you read ESPN's take it is 100% "we care about the health of the players, dominos starting to fall, blah blah blah."

Lets look at the economic reality.

The MAC makes its money losing away college football games and playing Men's Basketball.  With the Big 10 and the SEC both cancelling nonconference games, a huge revenue source for the MAC vanished.  The NCAA has also demanded expensive testing regimes for Fall sports.

To recap - MAC loses its means of making serious money for the Fall.  Having any Fall sports would be far more expensive because of the mandated testing requirements.  So cancel Fall sports and cut your losses.  This also means that the MAC can postpone the difficult political decision of eliminating sports which always lose money to another day.

[SirAndrewD]

There goes the Big 10...

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/08/10/report-big-ten-will-not-play-in-2020/

[airboy]

^ This seems to be premature.  Some of the schools are pushing back hard on this.  I'm guessing that some Athletic Directors & University Presidents are starting to realize that if they cancel football in a power 5 conference that it may cost them their extremely high paying jobs.

[SirAndrewD]

Dan Patrick reports the Pac 12 is out as well. 

However, the SEC is looking at forming a one year super conference made up of teams that are pushing back from the conference votes.   Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan seem to be open to a one year exit.

The primary reason for the Big 10 and Pac 12 schools wanting it to cancel is being reported as the move by the players to organize and create a College Football Players Association.

[airboy]

The Name/Image/Likeness lawsuit was won and will be implemented pretty soon.  That will cause some changes - but not as much as the players think.

There has been little success in unionizing college athletics over the decades.  The big problem is Title 9 and the mandated split in "opportunities to participate."

The demands that I've read about deal with covid safety stuff with an add-on demanding 50% of all football revenues - which will never fly and is highly questionable legally given all of the Title 9 crap that has accumulated over the decades. 

If the college kids don't want to play men's football or basketball - then set up minor leagues like baseball does and let them have at it.  That has come back again in basketball since the "one and done" stuff yielded obvious corruption when a player or two can get you to the post-season - but they can't be paid.  The Zion Williamson situation at Dook is quite ugly.

I really wish college football and basketball did not act as "unofficial minor leagues" for major league sports - the inability to pay people what they can command on the open market sets up huge incentives to cheat.  The way college baseball is done now is a much more honest way to address the situation. 

[airboy]

Auburn had an explosion in plague cases when the students returned.  This was totally expected since the plague poses few problems to those under 40.  A total of 517 new cases were reported in two weeks - with 502 coming from students.  The "backup plague dorms" have not come anywhere close to capacity.  High school football has resumed in Alabama.  AU is having football practice with the first game towards the end of September.  Unlike UNC and NC State - the AU administration expected the plague and expected the consequences to be minor.

In an outbreak of amazing common sense, AU decided to limit the first football game to 20% of capacity and gave almost all of the tickets to students.  This is often the only time the kids get to see games during their lives, and they are at minimal risk for serious consequences.  My wife and I were amazed the University did something so obviously logical.

[Sir Slash]

If Covid has returned logic to college campuses, then that's one positive thing it's done at least.

[solops]

My son is at Texas A&M taking all upper level classes. All in "in-person". They wear masks and all sit at least 6 feet apart. I doubt if anyone KNOWS what the Wuhan virus infection rate or infected number is, but he says that as far as he can tell the number of actual sick people is not noticeable. I believe a lot of the lower level (larger) classes are on-line only.

Related comment: Everyone knew and expected that "opening up" would cause an increase in the number of infections. Now that it has done exactly what was predicted, I am mystified as to the sudden panic. The salient fact is that the people who are most subject to die, like me, are not the ones getting infected.

[airboy]

My son is at Texas A&M taking all upper level classes. All in "in-person". They wear masks and all sit at least 6 feet apart. I doubt if anyone KNOWS what the Wuhan virus infection rate or infected number is, but he says that as far as he can tell the number of actual sick people is not noticeable. I believe a lot of the lower level (larger) classes are on-line only.

Related comment: Everyone knew and expected that "opening up" would cause an increase in the number of infections. Now that it has done exactly what was predicted, I am mystified as to the sudden panic. The salient fact is that the people who are most subject to die, like me, are not the ones getting infected.

Gig Em' Aggies - (except against Auburn).

The A&M Band is the best marching band in the country and your basketball dance group is by far the hottest in the SEC.
Lots of A&M grads on the Auburn faculty, and several are buddies.