(07-18-2020, 09:57 AM)teejers1 Wrote: (07-18-2020, 06:02 AM)Farm93 Wrote: College Football will next happen in Fall 2021 - Best Case
It is not the games, really. A touch of helmet creativity could help a lot.
The problem is everything else.
How to practice various essential skills daily.
How to keep players away from each other.
How to avoid others on campus that may be asymptomatic carriers and still be an on-campus student
How to avoid others while travelling
How to justify games if the other undergrads are on-line only
And this is not about how to do this in July it is how to do that in October and November when the cases in the USA will be MUCH higher than today.
The idea of a winter/spring football season is crazy given what happened in March & April 2020.
Schools that have not planned their budgets for a year without football revenue should get to work on scenario planning ASAP.
I just hope Stanford's recently announced cut in sports reflected that scenario because if not there may be more cuts to announce in a few months.
1. There is a way (on safety front) to justify playing football (and other sports) if "regular students" aren't on campus - indeed, in this "safety trumps all" environment, you should be advocating for that. Of course, we know it's an optics thing, not a safety thing.
2. I dispute the notion that one infection ==> team shutdown. When kids get sick, they sit out. This obviously is more dramatic than other illnesses (though not for the college competitors); still, it's possible to have a kid or two of 5 isolate and sit out the requisite period before rejoining the team. Isn't that going on right now in the sports that are competing?
3. Does anyone know the fallout, if any, from TBT. That was a men's five on five basketball tourney where the winner took all of the $1M prize. I know they brought in extra teams at the outset to ensure sufficient entrants, but I didn't hear of any forfeits due to Covid - or of an outbreak amongst the competitors during the tourney (of course, I didn't really pay much attention to that whole thing, so maybe there were problems once the competition began).
I don't think one infection would cause the team to shutdown. It would just cause the team to lose every game for a few weeks.
Why? As best I can tell the NCAA rules with pods and 14 day quarantine rules sounds very similar to the CIF rules. The CIF rules included the idea that players would practice in pods. If a player tested positive in a pod, then all of the players in that pod would need to quarantine for 14 days. The challenge would then be to form pods that prevent all players of a specific roster spot to be stuck in quarantine. However, a pod with different positions and levels on the depth chart would create a practice group quite different from pre-COVID practices.
The CIF rules looked impractical even before the July resurgence of COVID. So odds were good CIF would postpone all fall sports into a 10 week period between January-February and perhaps early March even before the largest school districts opted to go virtual and then Gov Newsom's virtual school declaration for most of the populated counties. Their next meeting in Monday July 20th. My children laugh at me when I tell them they should keep training just in case. Admittedly my appeals are not particularly credible.
I'd bet big money the Jan-Mar plan will get cancelled in December, but that's for a different time.
The NCAA seems to be on a similar track. Very tough pod and quarantine rules, a bunch of schools going on-line only, and athletic conferences embracing reality.
Pro sports are much easier because you can force the people into hotel bubbles and command them not to interact with people outside of the team. That is not possible for student-athletes for so many reasons.
Looks like most of the pro-sport bubbles in the USA with everyone in the same venue have gone OK. MLS had a few teams drop out. I am not convinced the USA sports that are trying to add in travel will have the same luck, but even that is easier than trying to move a group of college students to different venues.
And before thinking about the logistics of moving a football team around in charter flights with several trainers and coaches, think about trying to move a soccer team around the USA with a couple of coaches on commercial flights.
After imagining that soccer scenario you likely will realize what the NCAA will announce in a few more days.