As Virus Cases Spike, Hurdles to College Football Season Mount

GREEN BAY, Wis. – As the calendar marches into the heart of July and the COVID-19 pandemic continues its march through everything and every place in the United States, the state of the college football season appears to be standing on ever-thinning ice.

The latest came on Thursday, when the Big Ten Conference announced a conference-only football schedule. That means the big Notre Dame-Wisconsin showdown at Lambeau Field has been canceled.

As Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde wrote:

College athletic leaders are having serious doubts on an on-time start to the 2020 college football season, or if a fall season is even possible at all. Feelings of optimism and confidence have turned to hope and apprehension. Contingency plans, dismissed weeks ago, are back in the proverbial picture, such as delaying the season deeper into the fall or moving it into the spring. And while a month remains before a decision deadline—NCAA leaders are targeting the first week of August—despair looms over a sport that just 15 days ago appeared to avoid the most catastrophic outcome: no fall football.

“Until two weeks ago, everybody felt pretty good about starting on time on Sept. 5 and Aug. 29,” says West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, the chair of an important law-making NCAA body, the Football Oversight Committee. “The last two weeks have really put a wet blanket on that, and we’re saying, ‘Maybe that’s not going to happen.’”

College athletic executives enter what many believe is the most crucial month in the modern history of the sport. At the end of which, they must determine whether—during a global pandemic—to promote a collision-filled sport that involves more than 100 locations and 10,000 young people. What decides such an outcome is actually quite simple: Viral cases must fall or at the very least plateau, college administrators and NCAA medical experts told Sports Illustrated this week.

One described it succinctly: “It’s going to take a pretty dramatic change.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY on the state of college football and the economic crisis that could follow.

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