How an Altered Ole Miss Academic Calendar Could Impact Athletic Calendars
Schools around the country are beginning to tweak their fall academic calendar to prepare for a potential second spike of the Coronavirus in the winter.
If Ole Miss and a larger group of schools in the Southeastern Conference move in a similar manner, it very well could have massive ramifications on the sports schedule, particularly for football and basketball.
Earlier this week, South Carolina became the first Power-5 school to announce that they will be cancelling their fall break and hold all final exams remotely in an attempt to have all students off-campus by Thanksgiving. On Monday, Notre Dame followed suit, announcing they will be starting the fall semester early and also cancelling fall break in a similar attempt.
Since the first two dominos fell, Creighton and Marquette have made similar announcements. More universities are expected to follow the trend.
Theoretically, the decision is to guard against a second potential spike of the COVID-19 virus. On paper, lining up the decision to prevent students from traveling home and then back to campus makes sense. This late fall to early winter period also lines up with when some experts believe the virus could mutate and rear its ugly head once more.
So all this presents one obvious question: if Ole Miss follows suit with other universities, how will the football and basketball (and potentially even baseball) seasons be altered?
If the goal is to keep students off campus, it would be bizarre and moderately hypocritical to keep student-athletes on campus.
“We’re trying to think responsibly and creatively about how to best have the college basketball season play out for student-athletes, teams and fans,” said the NCAA vice president for men’s basketball, Dan Gavitt, to Sports Illustrated. “We’re trying to be very creative and nimble, but it’s still early in the process.
“In mid-May, there are no bad ideas. And the virus will determine what the best ones are.”
As we all know, the Egg Bowl is played on Thanksgiving Day. Pairing a win-total of 5.5 (with -145 odds on the over) with the fact that Ole Miss football is No. 3 nationally in APR, it's believed more likely than not that Ole Miss will make a bowl game in 2020. So would they stay on campus for these extra weeks of practice in December heading into the bowl season?
If November rolls around and there's a real threat of a second outbreak (certainly a big if), how many players and fans are going to sign up for a trip to the Belk Bowl?
Basketball faces even bigger question marks.
At this point, Ole Miss is scheduled to open their regular season on Nov. 10 against New Orleans at home. Over Thanksgiving weekend, they're slated for a tournament in the Cayman Islands. In mid-December, they have a big rivalry game lined up at home against Memphis.
Is this team really going to fly to the Cayman Islands if there's a real threat of a second outbreak? Should any games be played if the school goes into a lockdown post-Thanksgiving break? Like everything else in sports at this moment, it's up for discussion.
Baseball, in theory, would be relatively unaffected by such a decision. Spring ball is mostly wrapped up by the Thanksgiving holiday, at most they'd miss a week or so of practice. Where baseball would be seriously impacted is if, by similar token, the spring semester start date is pushed back.
As Pat Forde writes, the less time the entire student body spends on campus at American universities, the more it calls into question why the athletes should be there.
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