Penn State's James Franklin Can't Imagine All Schools Opening 'At the Same Time'

Penn State football coach James Franklin said Wednesday that he doesn't foresee every college football team beginning their seasons concurrently.

"I can't imagine that right now we're all going to open at the same time," he told ESPN's Heather Dinich. "If the SEC, for example, opens up a month earlier than the Big Ten, and the Big Ten is able to open up and 12 of the 14 schools, if two schools can't open, I don't see a conference—any conference—penalizing 80% or 75% of the schools because 25% of them can't open."

Franklin added that he believes holding the entire conference back when "two or three schools" have the ability to open limits an entire conference.

"You're hurting the conference as a whole in terms of your ability to compete," Franklin said.

ESPN notes that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has previously said "this situation is so fluid," and that the Big Ten has no timeline to make a decision regarding possible games.

According to an early April report from Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger, college football industry executives are also "already creating contingency plans for a nuclear fall of no football."

“The discussion that ADs are having about fall sports being canceled is a very real possibility,” Ramogi Huma, the president of the National College Players Association told Sports Illustrated. “It’s extremely hard to imagine any football in the fall on any level.”

“We’re doing all sorts of modeling on what the football season may look like, from a delayed start to no fans to pushing the entire season into the winter or spring,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said to Sports Illustrated. “We could end up throwing it all away, and that would be great, but we can’t afford to wait until the last minute to think about it. We’re trying to think of any way to keep the season alive, because of the economic engine it is for so many other sports. This year, it could be an economic engine on steroids.”

Franklin said it would be helpful for the NCAA to provide national guidelines regarding a possible return.

"That could at least help with it a little bit," he said. "In a perfect world, everybody opens at the same time. I just don't see any way that [will] be possible."