College Football 2019-20

[unclevlad]

Division II and Division III cancelled all fall championships.  It looks like the decision was based on a high number of schools opting out.

 

What disturbs me is how many states are planning to push forward with high school football:

https://www.maxpreps.com/news/qiL5GOXkFkyfJ9jwZ8wb-g/where-the-start-of-high-school-sports-stands-in-all-50-states-amid-pandemic.htm

[Pariah]

The high school where I teach has a home game schedule next Friday. The plan is to pre-sell tickets and enforce attendance limits and assigned seating.

 

I typically work the football games as a ticket taker (largely because in so doing I've discovered that the administrators don't ask me to do things like chaperone dances), which usually involves handling money and issuing tickets. Now it looks like all I will be doing is scanning, taking, or punching the tickets while somebody else ushers the fans to their assigned seats. We'll see how that goes.

[Pariah]

The MAC just postponed their football season until the spring. The first domino?

 

Power Five ADs: 'Inevitable' 2020 college football season will not be played this fall

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

The MAC just postponed their football season until the spring. The first domino?

 

Power Five ADs: 'Inevitable' 2020 college football season will not be played this fall

 

As I and others have said for some time.  But it's not the first domino in this case, more like...there's a bunch of wooden beams holding the season up.  The termites have been moving in, with every outright cancellation by a school or a conference.  This is the termites starting in on the main beam.  

 

What this also suggests is that on-campus classes are very much up in the air.

[Cancer]

Academics are leading athletics in this conversation.  University administrations have been slower to recognize/announce this than their faculty have presented their own ultimata about it, but most universities have opted for on-line only (perhaps not completely, but nearly completely) in the coming fall for courses.  Leading faculty is worse, proverbially, than herding cats, but the cats have moved together on their own will in this situation.

[Badger]

Herding cats isnt that hard, just shake the bag of cat treats.

[unclevlad]

The dominoes are shaking...

 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29629669/power-5-talking-no-fall-football

 

Great quote from the story that, IMO, says it all:

Quote

"Nobody wanted to be the first to do it," a Power 5 coach told ESPN, "and now nobody will want to be the last."

 

[Cancer]

13 hours ago, Badger said:

Herding cats isnt that hard, just shake the bag of cat treats.

 

Only if you have actually given treats out of the bag in living memory; otherwise it's just another meaningless noisemaker, which describes what university administrators have been doing with respect to their academics for ... well, I don't know how long.  Whenever they actually handed out treats to anyone who didn't actually bring in the money to hand some out was, it was before I became any kind of faculty, which was the early 1990s.

[Starlord]

Big Ten cancels football season

[Pariah]

My guess: PAC makes a similar announcement within the next 24 hours, with everyone else following suit by the end of the week. BYU makes its announcement within two hours of the MWC making theirs. Big XII is the last of the D1 conferences to cancel. 

[unclevlad]

3 hours ago, Starlord said:

Big Ten cancels football season

 

NOT correct;  the DFP link is mis-stating things.  The story says "expects to cancel" but it is NOT a done deal as of yet.  The Indy Star picked up the story with the same misinterpretation.  

 

The Big 10 has a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, and I expect everyone to decide very quickly;  there was something about students starting to return to campus *today.*  I don't recall the details, but clearly if this is for the fall sport athletes, you need the decide NOW.  

The other issue, from reports, is they're trying to CYA big time.  They want a shared announcement.  They talk about "we need to explain to the athletes."  Send in the medical staff to do that!  Not just the death rates but the serious complications.  IOW, I think they're hoping for a wing and a prayer so they don't have to lose the billions of dollars that will vaporize once they say that ugly word, Cancelled.

[unclevlad]

OTOH the Mountain West just did cancel, so that's 2 of the Group of Five.

 

Looks like the Big 10 and Pac 12 may be deciding tomorrow.

[Pariah]

The Mountain West Conference's decision to postpone or cancel may have been exacerbated by the ugly situation playing out at Colorado State right now. Rumors and allegations of coaches ignoring protocols and asking players not to report symptoms because the team can't afford to lose them, that kind of thing. Not a good look, and CSU is probably fortunate to have come to this outcome.

[Michael Hopcroft]

42 minutes ago, Pariah said:

The Mountain West Conference's decision to postpone or cancel may have been exacerbated by the ugly situation playing out at Colorado State right now. Rumors and allegations of coaches ignoring protocols and asking players not to report symptoms because the team can't afford to lose them, that kind of thing. Not a good look, and CSU is probably fortunate to have come to this outcome.

Now, this is a place where a more ethical NCAA would have stepped in to protect "student-athletes" by giving them the chance to leave for another school and not lose a day of eligibility, but we know that won't happen. Because to the NCAA, ethics is for little people with little power.

 

CSU needs to at the very least fire the coaching staff.

[unclevlad]

But this wasn't CSU alone, and I am absolutely certain they weren't unique.

 

Reports right now:

--majority of the Big 10 ADs want to play

--we're hearing from several players they want to play, including some teams

--Scott Frost is "considering all options" to create some kind of a schedule 

--James Franklin and Jim Harbaugh are pushing to play

--Lou Saban is asserting the players would be safer 

 

Tie that in with CSU.  There is going to be serious pressure on anyone considering opting out, and like CSU, strong disincentive to report properly.  Also, the further you go down the road, the harder this will be to stop.  Look at MLB, and the mess of a season they're having...but this many games in, there's a TON of pressure to play it out as best they can.  And, of course, the fact that so many areas are nowhere near reaching reopening guideline markers.

 

And yeah, the NCAA is absolutely playing the part of the emperor from The Emperor's New Clothes here.  

[unclevlad]

I just had a thought.

 

Some coaches are making the case that the players would be safer staying in the program, in a more controlled setting, with constant testing available.  That may or may not be true;  if the players conform to isolation rules, it probably is true, but the risk is high if even a few of them don't.  

 

Let's assume for the moment that would be true.  Well, if you're providing the athletes regular, consistent testing, with extra security...would this not be an extraordinary benefit, not available to the general student populace, that goes far beyond room and board?  As such...would this not actually be an impermissible benefit, would this be ethical to provide all of this when telling the majority of the student body that their classes are going to be online only, and they have to fend for themselves?

[Pariah]

...and the B1G is out.

 

Big Ten cancels college football season for fall 2020, hopes to play in spring 2021

 

I expect the PAC will follow suit by the end of the day.

[Pariah]

And so it has.

 

Pac-12 cancels fall 2020 college football season, aims to play in spring 2021

 

They have also postponed basketball until at least the first of the year.

[unclevlad]

I'll predict that the ACC and SEC do the same before the weekend.  

[Pariah]

Maybe...maybe not.

 

Big 12 proceeding toward playing 2020 college football season despite Big Ten, Pac-12 cancellations

 

With the Big XII moving forward, any motivation the ACC or SEC had to give serious consideration to cancellation may have slipped away.

[Pariah]

On a side note--and I acknowledge that this might be a better post for the politics thread--it's worth noting that the two major conferences they have canceled are on the West Coast and in the Northeast, while the ones still playing (or contemplating playing) are in the Midwest and the South.

 

At the G5 level, the MAC has approximately the same footprint as B1G. The Mountain West is a little odd in that it has plenty of teams on the West Coast, but a few in more conservative states, e.g., Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

[unclevlad]

13 hours ago, Pariah said:

On a side note--and I acknowledge that this might be a better post for the politics thread--it's worth noting that the two major conferences they have canceled are on the West Coast and in the Northeast, while the ones still playing (or contemplating playing) are in the Midwest and the South.

 

At the G5 level, the MAC has approximately the same footprint as B1G. The Mountain West is a little odd in that it has plenty of teams on the West Coast, but a few in more conservative states, e.g., Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

 

You can make the connection to the resistance to imposing restrictions, and pushes to reopen, if you prefer.  That connection is more direct.

 

The Mountain West...if the West Coast schools are pushing to cancel, how many of them would take that action even if, hypothetically, the majority wanted to continue?  For some schools, not playing was likely a foregone conclusion based on state- and school-level policies.  So even if, say, a Wyoming wanted to play...who would they have available as potential opponents?

 

I'm probably wrong about the ACC and SEC changing their position this week...but I still see no chance they'll play a full schedule, and no more than a slim chance they'll play.  It'll also be interesting to see if this comes back to bite their collective backsides, as this compellingly proves, IMO, that the players are NOT students first.

[Michael Hopcroft]

5 hours ago, unclevlad said:

I'm probably wrong about the ACC and SEC changing their position this week...but I still see no chance they'll play a full schedule, and no more than a slim chance they'll play.  It'll also be interesting to see if this comes back to bite their collective backsides, as this compellingly proves, IMO, that the players are NOT students first.

Or last. Although the bulk of student-athletes (especially the ones who aren't to-rank pro prospects) will try to take the opportunity to earn a degree that would not have been available to them otherwise. Ever since I was a non-athlete in the athletic dorm of my college (NAIA level, with a football team that went winless several years in succession before being shut down), I lost the concept of the "dumb jock". I'm sure there are a few out there, but most of these guys really want to succeed in school as well as on the field and will put in the work to do it if given the opportunity.

 

Now treating these athletes as though they were pros already without paying them for their time? It does these athletes no service if they are scheduled so heavily on football that they don't have as much time for study, classes, or interacting with other people than their teammates and coaches. What other interests will they lose the chance to develop if all they are fed is football, football, football?

[unclevlad]

So, the University of North Carolina just cancelled all in-person classes for the fall, after 177 students had to be isolated after testing, and about twice that isolated after potential exposure.

Of course, the athletic department is still planning to continue.  Nauseating but a foregone conclusion.

 

Still, the termites in the House of College Football have spread to a new wall.  Students have barely returned;  what'll happen over the next 2 weeks?

[Pariah]

So Notre Dame, North Carolina, and now NC State have all moved to all-online teaching for the fall...but they're all still planning to play football. How does that work?

 

Meanwhile, Nebraska football parents are apparently threatening legal action over the B1G's decision NOT to play football this fall.

 

BYU, the only team west of Kansas that's still planning to play, now has a five game season scheduled, with games at Navy, at Army, home to Troy, home to Houston, and home to FCS North Alabama. This after losing nine games against B1G, PAC, $EC, and MWC opponents when those leagues shut down football for the fall.

 

This whole deal is a clusterflop. I don't see how any team is going to play into November, never mind bowl season or any kind of a 'championship'.