In which we attempt to answer the looming question.

Is there going to be football this year? And how?

Seth: Clearly the answer to this is "it depends" but we're at the point now where we can set some contours of the possibility right?

Ace: To some extent, sure. The NCAA and individual conferences are laying the groundwork for athletes to return for workouts, so there’s clearly an intent to move forward. We even had Gene Smith suggesting Ohio State could play games in front of limited crowds. I find Smith’s statements to be, uh, perhaps too optimistic.

Brian: They're going to try because they've backed themselves into a corner where all money must be spent immediately so it looks like these athletic departments aren't wildly profitable and no one has a reserve. Except Georgia.

Ace: Plus they lost the NCAA basketball tournament, which is a massive pile o’ money.

Seth: I imagine everybody's having sober budget meetings right now.

Ace: Smaller schools are already cutting sports. Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way to sell off the unnecessary pieces of the lavish facilities everyone’s built to launder their profits. Not a big market for indoor waterfalls at the moment.

Brian: Put your Lockers From Space on craigslist maybe?

Ace: [greg dooley has logged on]

media day or live auction? [Fuller]

Seth: A lot of that pay-immediately money goes to the huge staffs athletic departments carry. They are also the most dischargeable. Which means this conversation is about trying to save peoples' jobs.

Ace: The NCAA literally dispersed the emergency backup fund in the year or two leading up to when they actually needed it. Everyone spent the money.

Brian: It feels like college sports is steaming right at an iceberg, everyone knows it's there, and they're having tea while looking in a different direction. And there are three guys who are planning to shoot up the iceberg, do a flip, and be legends.

Seth: So they're going to play football, because the alternative is the iceberg.

Brian: Football is the iceberg!

Ace: Yeah, football at any point in 2020 feels like a very bad idea.

Seth: I thought it was making zero money in 2020.

Ace: Both are bad but one doesn’t kill people.

[After THE JUMP: icebergs everywhere.]

Brian: This is a Korean study about a call center outbreak:

There was one infected person who sat in the top area.

Ace: There’s another study that traces a massive number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea to one fitness class. Working out together is the worst possible thing to do if you’re trying to prevent the spread of this.

Seth: Singing together is worse. So "The Victors" is out.

Brian: And the US lockdown has been halfass and is moving into a quarter-ass period.

Been playing around with FT's data for an article I'm working on.

This stat blew my mind.

Italy and Spain had among worst outbreaks in Europe. But by day 80, Italy was down 80% from peak, Spain was down 93%.

US (top line in chart) at same point is down only 28% from peak. pic.twitter.com/TC70RCGAD7

— Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) May 22, 2020

Ace: The idea of social distancing at a football game is laughable, too. Sure, you can sit apart in the stands if you limit the crowds, but how are you managing the lines to get in? What about the concessions and the bathrooms? It’s a logistical nightmare.

Seth: Ingress and egress. Outside the stadium.

Brian: That's a separate issue from whether football can be played at all, IMO.

Ace: Yeah, then there’s the issue of even getting the teams together. Players are currently spread across the country. Testing capability is limited at best. Schools aren’t necessarily bringing their students back. Even getting to the point of being able to practice together seems like an enormous hurdle. Then you get to the notion of players working out in close quarters during a pandemic.

Seth: So the one thing the colleges have going for them is if they're open they're going to be controlling the student population.

Brian: I have serious doubts about how much schools can police house parties.

Ace: Same.

Brian: These are young, fit people and some of them have chosen to go to Michigan State.

decisions were made [Patrick Barron]

Seth: They're going to have widespread testing. They're going to have contact tracing. The players are getting three tests a week and the student body is getting one a week, and their temperatures taken when they enter every buildings. They're also going to lock down the campuses. It won't make it 100% safe, but might make it workably safe?

Ace: Wait… they’re going to have all that?

Seth: I'm supposing.

Ace: That’s a big supposing. Particularly on a timeline that’d keep the season on track.

Seth: The season's not going to be on track; I doubt they play a game before October 1st. But I think it's reasonable that a major university can accomplish with its population what South Korea or Germany can with theirs.

Brian: Okay but some of these major universities are Rutgers.

Ace: We also need to establish that, as a country, we are not in the same place as those countries.

Seth: As a country no. As a university campus, if they're going to be open, they HAVE to be.

Ace: Also, instead of acknowledging that, we’re on the brink of a lot of states opening up for business again. You can’t untie the campus from the country. The students are scattered around said country. How do you possibly ensure safety while bringing students back to the dorms in this environment? They need to answer that before even thinking about football.

Seth: The students are going to come back whether they want them to or not. The landlords aren't releasing them from their leases. I'm glad I'm not in charge of the thing, and I'm sure you're right they need to figure that out. I think they a) will, and b) have no choice but to, because the students will come anyway.

BiSB: Even if it is all possible, we also don't have unlimited resources, so spending that much extraordinary effort on football is tough to justify.

Ace: It’s going to take an incredible amount of resources to get the students back on campus in a way that’s safe. Is it worth it to keep things on schedule when you can do classes online? Football shouldn’t factor into that question.

BiSB: This also assumes that schools are going to trust the least competent school on their schedule.

/glances at Maryland

Ace: That’s three Big Ten East schools we’ve now mentioned as being untrustworthy. Ohio State hasn't yet been one of them.

BiSB: To be fair, I can see Iowa screwing this up.

Seth: This is a good year to say fuck Maryland and fuck Rutgers. Adding overnight travel to any of this is purely out of the question.

Brian: Right, it takes just one screwup and then half your conference is shut down. Even if we elide the moral and ethical implications of having football, on a practical level it seems inevitable that teams are going to get shut down for two or three weeks or a month.

Ace: It’s wild that this feels necessary to say: just one screwup, in this case, can lead to multiple deaths. It's not worth it! It's just not. I say that as someone who loves football and relies on sports happening to make a living.

BiSB: People want football. And they want normalcy. And they often equate the two. But even if there is football, it won't be "normal."

these stands might remain empty for a while [Barron]

Ace: I watched the crowdless UFC fights last week. It was sports. It was also surreal.

Brian: There is an argument that if the prospect of football gets someone to do a good test/trace/isolate regime that might be worth it, since you could then spread that model. You shouldn't have to do that since you have good models but Not Invented Here syndrome is real.

Ace: It sounds great in theory but isolating college students is like herding cats.

BiSB: Aside from "can football be played," there's also the question of "what does the season look like?" Are we talking about some teams playing 4 games and some playing 9 and Rutgers and Maryland playing each other 7 times?

Ace: If you push the season back even a week or two, you’re going to get some hellish weather games, too.

BiSB: (I am not opposed to hellish weather games)

Ace: Fair. It adds to the farce, though.

Seth: I think you have to start with no football in September. At least give the students a month on campus with their security protocols before throwing them at each other. Throw out all the Michigan at Washington games now.

Ace: But are they practicing during that time? It’d pose a lot of the same danger as actual games but you can’t start a season without some sort of training camp.

Brian: I think that is what it looks like. Certain teams don't play or barely play. Many games are cancelled. Conference titles are impossible to determine.

Ace: Rutgers wins the Big Ten by flagrantly avoiding social distancing measures and refusing to forfeit games.

Seth: This would hardly be the first weird-ass season in cfb history. We talk about 1918 but there were the WWII years as well under severe travel restrictions. There were intramural (e.g. freshmen vs sophomores) games for a month before any games were played. Honestly the least interesting thing to me about football in 2020 would be who wins it.

Ace: There were a lot of unnecessary deaths in 1918 because we’ve had a literal century since then to better understand concepts like germ theory. Meanwhile, world wars aren’t contagious.

Brian: "Is this a good idea?"
No.
"Is this probably happening anyway?"
Yes.

Ace: Yeah. Doing some half-assed season seems like the worst possible compromise.

Seth: I'm just saying you don't need a precise number of games versus these precise opponents to have a year of football feel like one.

BiSB: If you are suggesting the NCAA would avoid a worst possible compromise, I have news.

Ace: I'd do no such thing.

Brian: Given our luck the only game that gets played is OSU-Michigan and it's 70-15.

BiSB: We looked good in the first quarter, though.

Ace: Cancel the whole goddamn thing right now.

Seth: FWIW Notre Dame is desperately looking for opponents to meet their NBC contract. That tells you where the schools' minds are at. They're going to do this.

Ace: They’re going to try. I’m not sure they’re going to succeed.

Brian: I can't imagine the depths of weird a Michigan-ND game during a pandemic would reach.

BiSB: Oh god, the Michigan/Indiana Pandemic Game.

Ace: We haven’t yet mentioned that this comes at a time when the NCAA’s position on amateurism is weaker than ever. Justifying any games is going take a high-wire act and we may see players refuse. I think most guys want to play but it’d only take one incident to spark something.

Seth: I have a small idea of the temperature of the players; some might refuse, and damn any school that doesn't grant that, but you're right the guys want to play.

BiSB: There's also about 73 types of political implications to all of this, which is going to be oh so much fun to wade through.

Ace: Dancing Through a Minefield: Sportswriting in 2020

Brian: The Athletic has a survey of 45 players out today:

Almost 80 percent of players surveyed were comfortable returning to campus even if their fellow students were not allowed to do the same. Most universities have already elected to utilize online learning for summer sessions but are wrestling with how to manage an on-campus experience they intend to offer in the fall.

“If only athletes are on campus, it would not feel like our health is a priority,” said a Power 5 offensive lineman. “With adequate testing available, I am not worried about the return to campus. My biggest concern is what will happen if and when a player tests positive.”

Said a Power 5 quarterback: “I wouldn’t be concerned unless the numbers of cases suddenly went back up.”

On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being extremely uncomfortable and 5 being extremely comfortable, zero players said that they would be extremely uncomfortable. Only three rated their comfort level with a return as a 2.

I don't know how that shifts if someone's QB gets hospitalized. COVID is weird as hell.

BiSB: Yep, there's gonna be a lot of "I ate the whole pizza" excuses.

Seth: I don't know that Alabama would sit their QB if he tested positive. That's the thing that scares me about this.

BiSB: You're telling me teams are going to sit their best player, who may be asymptomatic, from a big game? Neeeeeeeeever happen.

Seth: The fact is somebody's offensive lineman will test positive, the rest of the OL room will be put into quarantine for 14 days, and as the Brady Hoke study demonstrated you can't play football without an offensive line.

Ace: We also haven’t mentioned that, while the players are generally in lower-risk groups—which is a term I don’t love throwing around given the severity of the illness and the reports of long-term complications in people who’ve recovered—the coaches and other staffers are often very much not in the same category. Coaches have money and power and don’t necessarily have to do this.

Brian: Yeah, this post-distancing outbreak amongst Bryant-Denny construction workers bodes unwell.

Seth: This would maybe be the dumbest or greatest idea ever: what if we play the season without coaches?

Ace: Michigan tried that in 2014.

BiSB:

​

Seth: One issue with removing coaches: Penn State probably wins the Big Ten.

Ace: I think we’ve concluded that moving ahead with a season in most any form is a terrible idea that’s going to happen anyway?

Seth: I'm interested to hear everyone's ideas for what the hell it looks like.

BiSB: Our predictions?

Ace: They don’t play it. It’s too hard to justify. If they try, something happens in the leadup—namely, positive tests—that nixes the whole thing.

Brian: Games are now dance-offs. Dennis Norfleet re-gains eligibility on a technicality and we win the national title.

Seth: 

1. Testing and tracing to the moon
2. Only essential staff.
3. Students only in the stadium, with some insane plan to get everyone in and out.
4. Only nearby games are played, some schedule holes replaced with Toledo/Notre Dame
5. Advertising in the Big House because it will save some jobs and at this point who really gives a shit so long as they burn the AllState nets at the end of the season.
6. Many games canceled.

BiSB: The season starts more or less on time, but generally without fans and with some significant games canceled. Things go somewhat normally for a while, but a few positive tests here and there blow holes in rosters, and then knock out whole games. Eventually the thing takes on too much water, and the season gets scrapped by mid-October. Scott Frost claims a National Championship.

Ace: Unless we get the dance-off, even our best-case scenarios don’t sound very good.

BiSB: Replace football with zorb football. QED.

Ace: Fast-track a license for NCAA 21 and play the season virtually, this is not a joke. Each team gets to nominate their best PS4 player.

Seth: People are going to die this year. I don't say that callously, or advocating for anything, but as a simple fact. They're going to screw things up, and people are going to die so we could play a football season. This is the most surreal thing of all.

BiSB: That's a true statement most years. Football is, uh, rather unsafe. The threat is just more visible this year.

Ace: It’s a much greater threat this year. Cancel the season so people don’t die in order to provide a brief distraction while lining the pockets of people who are already rich, please.

BiSB: Of course that is the ethically and logically correct answer. On the other hand, SPORTSBALL. So it's impossible to say which is right.

Ace: Sorry, dancing in the minefield again.

Brian: