Is it Possible We Won’t Have a College Football Season in 2020?
On Wednesday Greg Sankey, the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, held a conference call with media from around the country. The day before, the SEC had announced that all spring sporting events for the rest of the 2020 academic year, including spring football games, had been cancelled because of ongoing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
So what happens next?
There are two big events on the SEC Calendar in the not-so-distant future:
**--The annual SEC Spring Meetings scheduled for May 25-29 in Destin, Fla. This is a huge end-of-the-academic year event attended by all of the league’s coaches and administrators plus a sizable media contingent.
“We haven’t cancelled spring meetings yet but we’re looking at contingency planning given the practicalities and realities presented to us at this time,” Sankey said.
**--SEC Football Media Days are scheduled for July 13-16 at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. Over 1,000 media members attend each year in what has become the unofficial kickoff to the college football season. The event is still over three months away. Could it be in trouble?
Sankey said earlier in the call that he was a “glass half-full” guy and that applies here.
“I’m going to be half-full right now and say that we’re full steam ahead on our Atlanta planning on Media Days,” he said.
But Sankey also admitted that a week ago the SEC was full steam ahead on holding a men’s basketball tournament in Nashville. That event would eventually be cancelled because of fast-moving events.
“So we’re going to prepare for disruption but we’re going to plan as if, in July, we’ll have the Media Days opportunity as scheduled and that’s the best answer I can give you at this moment,” Sankey said.
And then the call with Sankey went to its next logical topic: If it’s possible that the SEC Spring Meetings in May and the SEC football media days in July could be cancelled, does that put all or part of the 2020 college football season at risk?
At the beginning of the call Sankey told reporters that given the uncertainty of how the virus will spread, the answer to many questions is going to be “I don’t know.”
This, said Sankey, is one of those questions.
“I’m a half-full perspective person so I have optimism,” said Sankey. “I think that if I read those health leaders, we’re going to have a period of time to see what happens with the growth of these cases ad we’ll make decisions down the road.
“Our focus is preparing for the 2021 academic year, the fall seasons, as currently scheduled. So there’s a period at the end of that sentence.”
“My hope is that we can return to our normal, organized activities, our normal experiences.”
In the grand scheme of things we have to remember that these are only sports. Many of our fellow citizens are dealing with life and death. Others are dealing with incredible financial hardship caused by a devastating blow to the economy. Their welfare must come first.
But on Wednesday, for the first time since the world turned upside down last week, one of the leading figures in college sports talked about the possibility that there will not be a college football season in 2020.
It was sobering.
Stay tuned.