Just A Minute: We Realistically Can't Have College Football Until Something Significantly Changes

I hate to be the buzzkill guy, and I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see a realistic way that the 2020 college football season goes on as planned.

How can it?

It's May. We still don't know enough about the coronavirus COVID-19, including how the disease is transmitted, why it affects some people more than others, and whether anyone can get it more than once (although there are encouraging signs that a person can't).

Schools say that they are preparing to re-open in the fall, which is the right approach for now. They have to plan to have everything in place. But we're still nowhere near there.

Would you want to be in a classroom, a dorm room, or in a weight room until there's a vaccine?

Would you want your son or daughter?

Here are some of the things we do know:

Locally, we just had a spike here in Tuscaloosa. As of Wednesday afternoon there were 245 confirmed cases, an increase of 21.8 percent from last week, and four deaths.

In Alabama, we're up to 8,581 confirmed cases and 340 deaths.

Nationally, there have been 1.23 million confirmed cases. No other country has more than 219,329, Spain. So the United States has a million more, or more than five times any other country.

Among them there have been 73,000 deaths. No other nation has more than 30,000.

Those figures assume that everyone's been counted. No one believes that to be the case.

Opinions range on this, but experts are telling us that in order to even think about getting back to normal we need to be performing roughly 5 million tests every day.

We've done 7.8 million in roughly two months.

In the state of Alabama, there have been only 112,068 people tested out of 4.9 million.

Experts are also telling us to expect more waves down the road, including one in the fall.

Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on average almost 8,000 people die every day in the United States from all causes.

According to Statistica, as of Sunday the average daily death toll due to the coronavirus in the U.S. was almost 870 since the first case was confirmed on Feb. 15. In comparison, during the 2018-2019 (October to April) influenza season, around 161 people died daily on average from influenza.

"Taking the latest numbers into account, it seems that at this moment around one out of eight deaths in the United States every day have involved COVID-19."

Numerous reports earlier this week said that an internal White House report indicated that COVID-19 deaths are expected to rise to more than 3,000 a day by June 1, with new confirmed cases surging to about 200,000 daily.

And people want colleges to play football? SEC Media Day is just two months away from Wednesday. Even if there's a major medical breakthrough tomorrow there won't be enough time to wipe out this disease by then.

One of key steps that needs to be taken before we see college football games is schools reopening and students back on campus. Right now it's hard to image that happening soon. The deadline appears to be July 1.

Jan. 1 appears to be a little more realistic, but again, only if people can feel comfortable with things like being in a room together, never mind the rigorous training, traveling and performing that goes with being on team. There's not just the players and coaches, but the entire support staff, from those preparing food down to the weight-room personnel.

Finally, there's the notion of playing before fans, which college football desperately needs since most of its revenue stems from attendance. Other sports and even the NFL can arguably go without people in the stands, but that's why there's been talk of possibly moving football to the spring this year.

Regardless, until everyone feels confident that athletics won't have a possible life-or-death factor attached to them the games simply can't go on.

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