Conference Craziness, Schedule Changes and Eventually Football
Twenty years from now in the year 2040, when people who weren't alive read the history of 2020, many won't believe it.
I'm living it and not sure I believe it some days, and yet here we are in this year in a seemingly alternate universe where little is what it was just twelve months earlier. \
Still, here we are on the day after the SEC joined the Big-10, Pac-12, and ACC in moving to the conference-only formal of scheduling for this season.
While I understand and accept the reasons for this move, I'm still saddened that we are losing some huge matchups between Powe Five conferences.
What are we losing?
Alabama-USC, Tennessee-Oklahoma, Texas-LSU, Vanderbilt-Kansas State, and the season-ending in-state battles between Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, and Kentucky-Louisville, all lost.
Fans have been anticipating some of these matchups for a year or more. They've spent money on travel, lodging and game tickets. People made plans to go where they've never been before, and might not have another opportunity to go again.
It's understandable, but sad too.
There are others, but the point is that while the changes were necessary from a health and safety standpoint, there are many long-standing traditions in college football that are gone, at least for this year anyway.
Then there is the push back of the starting date from Sept. 4 to Sept.26. While it's good news that we are getting college football, we now must wait a bit longer and in anticipation of what the schedules will look like with the additions of two new conference contests.
We can blame it on the need to rework schedules, which could be one of the reasons, but then the league already knows who will be added to each team's sheet, so will it need an extra three weeks to figure it all out?
Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger explained it like this.
"During an interview on The Paul Finebaum Show, Sankey suggested that the surge of students returning to campus next month was a big reason why wrote Dellenger. "Over the last two weeks of August, we are going to have tens of thousands of people back on our campuses. We need to make sure that happens and happens well," he said."
So the three-week delay is a hedge against the potential of new cases developing when the rest of the students return to campuses.
Ok, we get that. That will hopefully help with potential in-season interruptions from the virus.
So now that we know all this, we can begin looking forward to the season and actual games, and the new scheduling information to come.
Follow Greg on Twitter @GregAriasSports and @SIVanderbilt or Facebook at Vanderbilt Commodores-Maven.
