UW and All of College Football Faced with Play, Delay or No Play
Husky Stadium sits empty, waiting for fans to fill it up.
The football schedule says, that under normal circumstances, this would happen in fewer than two months. Michigan, a glamour opponent, is set to visit Seattle on Sept. 5 for the first time in 19 seasons.
Players, fans, busses and boats would descend on the lakeside facility as it has for more than a century, turning it into a city within a sprawling metro city.
However a disconcerting spike in novel coronavirus cases across the nation has put the college football season in serious jeopardy — and that includes the University of Washington.
The Ivy League on Wednesday canceled all fall sports, including football.
SEC leaders are calling the situation "uncomfortable."
Even Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, so confident two to three weeks ago of moving ahead as expected, says he's not sure anymore what will happen.
At the UW, an athletic department spokesman said on Thursday the school is continuing to monitor the health of its athletes and planning for different scenarios.
"It's like a sandwich and you don't know where to take a bite," Rob Scheidegger, the UW head football trainer, said previously of dealing with the virus.
SI's college football writers Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger offer a look at this precarious situation from a national perspective, which you can read here. It doesn't good.
The states of Florida, Texas Arizona and California have some of the highest rates of infection now and two of those as homes to multiple Pac-12 schools directly impact what could happen with Husky football.
The UW, with all of its medical resources and the important role it plays in modeling the arcs of the pandemic, has had just three athletes out of 157 test positive over the past month. Just one remains an active case.
Yet while the Husky football team remains largely untouched by the virus, who will be able to provide healthy competition in the truest sense of those words?
The options presented are: 1) starting the season on time; 2) delaying the season a month or more; 3) moving to a much smaller season in the spring, for a half-dozen games; or 4) canceling everything altogether for a year, which be financially disastrous for the sport.
A few weeks ago, Husky Maven asked UW fans if they would attend games at Husky Stadium this fall if given the chance?
The response was nearly 85 percent in favor of going, with many people cavalierly questioning the validity or the ferocity of the virus.
What pandemic?
As this second wave fills up hospital beds and severely strains medical systems, especially across the southern half of the country, football followers are rethinking that mindset or realizing they simply may no longer have an option.
Ohio State and North Carolina have shut down voluntary workouts. Washington continues to hold these sessions, with weight areas set up on concourses all around Husky Stadium.
College football leaders, by and large, say that they have until the first week of August to make a final determination on a fall season, partial season or no fall season.
What do you think will happen?
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