Power 5 Discussing Not Playing College Football
A Sunday meeting could lead to no college football.
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Will there be a sport to play this fall?
Normally at this time of year, we all would be previewing teams, position groups and counting down the days before the start to the college football season.
Now, there is so much uncertainty with games be canceled which include the MAC not playing football this fall.
The Power 5 league commissioners met on Sunday night to discuss the future of the upcoming season and the views were very much pessimistic in nature about the fall season.
Even before the meeting there was the real possibility of the season not even getting off the ground.
During the meeting, it is reported that the Power 5 leagues all want to be on the same page about the upcoming college football season will look like.
“It doesn’t look good,” one Power 5 athletic director said.
“My view is if we change course, we better be able to articulate the reason for doing so to our student-athletes,” he told ESPN.
The most telling quote comes from West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, who is the chair of the Football Oversight Committee who shays there is no current talks of what to do if there is no season.
“No one has talked about a plan if the season is canceled,” Lyons told ESPN. “If it’s canceled, we need to be able to give clear direction at that time, as opposed to saying, ‘We don’t know.'”
Some were calling this meeting an emergency but according to The Athletic, this Power 5 commissioner meeting was planned. However, it can still mean those same topics are being discussed.
There are plenty of issues with a spring football league as the recovery time and conflict of preparing for the NFL Draft stands in the way of a fully-fledged season during that time.
CFB Players Union?
Something else interesting came out Sunday night and it was seemingly started by Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and it is the #WeWantToPlay hashtag on Twitter.
This is a good thing that college football players are banding together to have a voice because they have not had ever really had one. Unfortunately, it took a once in a century pandemic to get the ball rolling.
Players do deserve a voice in what is going on in college football — pandemic or not — but that does not mean they get to force the conversation. Asking for eligibility protection is obviously very good and also standardized safety and testing around COVID-19.
The hashtag is nice and players want to play and fans want to watch and people who make a living covering the game want it to happen. However, that doesn’t mean it should or can take place in a safe manner.
There are a lot of reasons to point to why college football should not be played. Just look at Major League Baseball which is playing its schedule as usual with multiple flights and games in different cities. Multiple teams can not even get their games in and the St. Louis Cardinals were going to casinos when traveling.
These are adults, so how are college-aged students going to keep to themselves and not go out and about and just live life. This is not a bubble like the NBA or MLS has done with great success, which is not feasible for the college football season.
Perhaps players are safer on campus and in the dorms interacting with their football team compared to going back home but there is still a high risk in such a physical sport where there is so much contact with each other.
This attempt at unionizing I am all for and is long overdue. Yet, creating a hashtag and getting together does not mean these players can force a college football season to happen. There are doctors, experts, scientists, and a whole lot of other people who know more about COVID-19 and they need to be listened to as well for how to proceed and minimize the risk of getting sick.
My prediction is that the college football season will not be played this fall and there will be another song and dance to try to get something done in the spring, which is not ideal in itself if player safety is being considered.
