The Ivy League, the high-brow conference of Harvard and Yale, last claimed a national championship in football in 1927, when you could buy a new Ford Model A Roadster for $385. Ivy League teams appear in the Top 25 about as often as Halley's Comet appears in the sky.
Yet the Ivy League, where "student-athlete" actually still describes the priority, had the attention of all of college football Wednesday.
It is because, in the void of definitive answers to the question, we are all looking for harbingers and hints. Signs.
Will there be college football in the fall? Will there be pro football? Will it be on time, or delayed perhaps even to the spring? Will schedules be reduced? Will stadiums be full, empty or somewhere in the great in between.
Small signs emerge.
The Division 3 Centennial Conference just suspended all fall sports for 2020, notably including football, due to growing concerns over a coronavirus pandemic not nearly contained and, in much of the United States, surging anew.
Wednesday the Ivy League announced no sports will be played until January 2021, and the major Power 5 conferences were watching as they weigh their own path forward. If reports are accurate the Ivy League is headed for a reduced-schedule 2020 football season to be played in the spring of '21.
Clearly, small-college football does not rule campuses and coffers the way it does in the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and other giant leagues that rely on football revenue to primarily sustain their entire athletic budgets.
The Centennial Conferences and Ivy Leagues et al. have the luxury to make decisions with health and safety a dominant priority or even the only one.
So should the Power 5 leagues and the NFL, obviously, but it isn't that simple for them. They must marry their health-related concerns with the imperative of, well, money. It makes for an awkward marriage. A dangerous one, too.
It mirrors what we have seen across this country, as states eased their shutdown orders and reopened too soon against the advice of virus experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, putting economic concerns over safety. We are seeing the deadly results.
Sports are following the same path, alas.
Major League Soccer, the NBA and NHL are resuming their seasons (sans fans) this month in quarantined "bubble" environs. More dubiously, MLB plans to resume with travel and games at home stadiums, and has not ruled out a limited number of fans at some locales.
Even as many players have opted out and many more have tested positive, sports resume with the nectar of TV revenue driving decisions.
The restart already is fraying. MLS games have been postponed. NBA commissioner Adam Silver says more test-positives for COVID-19 within the bubble could end the season before it resumes. There are testing concerns throughout baseball.
I cannot envision any of these sports completing their restarted seasons. Broad collapse will occur.
The spring/summer leagues would have aborted their seasons to begin with if abundant caution about health concerns were the priority; clearly, it is not.
Now football twists in limbo.
The thing is, football pretty much starts now.
The Miami Dolphins and other NFL teams are to open their training camps July 28, with some players allowed in earlier. The Hurricanes and other colleges begin their preseason camps August 7 _ but coaches may begin interacting with players this coming Monday.
The NFL canceled its Hall of Fame game and reduced its preseason schedule from four games to two, but otherwise has given no indication it won't start on time as scheduled. Even as teams like the Dolphins have contingency plans to dramatically reduce the number of fans allowed at games.
In college football the doubts surrounding the coming season have been more public.
University of Miami director of athletics Blake James now says his gut feeling is a season starting with no fans. But will it start in September as scheduled? He says yes, as of now, but with some hesitation.
"I think everyone is getting more nervous," he said. "To say what it s going to look like on September 5 (the date of UM's season opener) is difficult."
The Centennial Conference is a blip on the college football radar from a national perspective and the Ivy League isn't much bigger.
But as the smaller conferences set the bar where it should be _ the health and well-being of their players coming first without equivocation _ the major colleges and the NFL will find it that much tougher to justify moving forward with other priorities clearly in place despite all the talk about testing and safety.
It is a deadly pandemic that remains most everywhere, invisible, and with sharp teeth.
Baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer are willing to take their chances, apparently _ owners and commissioners willing to put their players at risk for the financial return.
Against odds, let's see if the people who run major college football and the NFL are smarter.
Or at least more humane.
