Differing Sides Aside, Don't Rule Out Disjointed College Football Season
In this corner, we have the president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert.
In the other corner, we have the commissioner of the Big 12, Bob Bowlsby.
These two powerful figures have very different ideas about starting college football this fall.
"College athletes are college students, and you can’t have college sports if you don’t have college (campuses) open and having students on them," Emmert said during an interview on the NCAA's Twitter account. "You don’t want to ever put student-athletes at greater risk than the rest of the student body.”
Meanwhile, Bowlsby sang a different tune in an interview with SI's Ross Dellenger, believing that student-athletes just have to be enrolled and receiving some sort of academic workload, even online, to be able to play sports this fall.
"All of the commissioners and every president that I’ve talked to is in clear agreement: If you don’t have students on campus, you don’t have student-athletes on campus," Emmert said.
Apparently, not. So who do you believe about how and when the 2020 college football season will take place?
The easy answer is neither. There's no one person in control, as Bowlsby and Emmert have proven. Emmert serves at the highest position of the NCAA, but the governing body doesn't determine if/when football is played. That's going to fall on the conferences, school presidents and athletic directors.
Time is ticking, but it's still too early to make final decisions. Yes, Emmert says schools need to figure out what they're going to be doing by mid-June. That doesn't sound outlandish, but that's also more than a month away.
Nine of the 14 ACC schools, including Clemson, have said they are looking to bring students back on campus for the fall semester, which would meet Emmert's requirement for some. The rest haven't made that decision. Would the ACC go on without all of its members ready to start in September or October? No one knows, and if they say they do, well they don't.
The SEC plans on having a season, come hell or high water. That league hasn't backed down at all yet, and maybe that's not a bad approach. The NFL is planning on opening its season as previously scheduled. However, the pro league has built enough contingency plans, even though it won't publically discuss them, to adjust.
That's not a bad way to go. College sports do have very different obstacles to overcome, and yes, if a school can't have any sort of semester involving academics, it shouldn't be participating in sports.
As the national reopening continues, colleges will have to deal with more unforeseen challenges, but it's hard to believe there won't at least be online classes widespread. Emmert may have to get on board with Bowlsby's idea because it doesn't appear that the conferences are even close to bailing on a season.
Luckily, there's still time to figure all this out, but it could also be time to start thinking about what a disjointed college football season looks like this fall.
