ATLANTA (AP) – Well, it was a laugh while it lasted.
After some seasons of relative intellectual health, where we can all expect a valid playoff formula for the national champion and not be distracted by the music chairs of schools bouncing from one convention to another, school football is headed for a single season. Mess.
Or, dare we say, two seasons.
Nearly part of the sports group’s schools, known as the Football Bowl Subdivision, have postponed any attempt to play after the first year by the coronavirus pandemic (which, frankly, is the top moderate course).
The others, adding the tough Southeast Conference, are determined to continue in the fall even though Covid-19 is booming in many of its states.
Speaking on behalf of all of us, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez summed it up better.
“It was hard for me, ” he said. “I go to bed every single night and my body hurts because I’m suffering.”
If the team sticks to this ridiculous path, we will have two seasons that necessarily mean nothing, leaving us too long for the years in which we divide the national champions who have at least followed the same schedule.
The Big Ten and Pac-12, components of the Power Five meetings that primarily run the sport, have rescued their fall seasons but hope to return to the box in early 2021. Two leagues on the next level, Mid-American and Mountain West, have taken the same path, as have several individual schools.
In the last count, 53 of the 130 FBS schools postponed the start of their season until the end of the New Year, which has long been the classic end of the school football year.
Meanwhile, the SEC, Atlantic Coast Conference, and Big 12 stick to their plans for an fall season, all have made primary reviews to their schedules in the hope of achieving the goal before a virus that has already claimed the lives of about 170,000. Americans.Array The other FBS leagues – Conference USA, American, Sun Belt – have also chosen this route.
This is all crazy, of course, but surely in the mark of a multimillion-dollar game that necessarily operates outdoors in the NCAA jurisdiction, the highly imperfect organization that governs the rest of school athletics.
Even though everyone at FBS promised months ago to paint in combination to meet the enormous challenge of betting on a high-level game amid a furious pandemic, it soon became transparent that each convention would follow the path that would fit their own interests. .
There are no surprises there.
“It will take a while to heal,” Big Ten Ohio State coach Ryan Day said, “but if we put one foot in front of the other, we’ll do it again.”
If, through some miracle, the various parties come to their senses and agree to place a moderate solution that will not please any of them, it may look like this:
– A normal eight-game season, booked for the conference, which begins the week after the Super Bowl on February 7. Build conflicts with NCAA basketball tournaments in two weeks, which would also provide a window to compensate for any virus-like postponements. The weekday games would take place before the Final Four and the normal season would end on April 17. Yes, the weather would be brutal in many parts of the country, but it could be valuable if more enthusiasts could simply finish the games safely with the virus. has declined significantly.
– Conference championship games would be eliminated, replaced through eight-team playoffs that secure a place for each Power Five winner, the top-rated team among Group of Five winners and two wildcard teams. That tiebreaker would begin with doubles on April 24 and 25 at campus stadiums, followed by semi-finals on May 1 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the New Orleans Superdome (both venues are expected to host semi-final games this season). The national championship will be held on May 10 at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, which is in a position to host the best game this season. These dates may want to be replaced to reflect spring school schedules, but this deserves to be feasible. All other bowling games would be cancelled.
– Any spring season assignment takes into account the physical burden of looking to play two consecutive seasons in a single calendar year. The 2021 season is also expected to go through primary changes, adding the postponement of the start date until early October (offering a break of approximately five months between seasons). The normal season of 12 games would be reduced to 10 games, up to 11 games. Conference championship games would be eliminated for one more season, which would reduce players’ workload before the large number of footballs and four-team school football playoffs.
“I think we can do whatever we want, if we do it smart,” said Kirk Ferentz, coach at Big Ten Iowa School. “We want to see this as a combination of spring and autumn.”
The virus hovers mostly, which can ruin the best-designed plans.
“We want to make sure we have this virus before we get in the spring season,” said Jimmy Lake, coach of the Pac-12 Washington Huskies.
In fact, there are drawbacks to any spring plan, like most sensitive players who must focus on the NFL draft.
But everyone will have to recognize that there is no such solution in this unbeatable global world in which we live now.
“I just need to play football, when that’s the case,” said Skylar Thompson, the senior quarterback for Kansas State’s Big 12. “I just need to take the ball into my hands and pass the competition for the last time.”
For Thompson and others to have a hit in a season that doesn’t require a giant asterisk, or worse, stops before it’s over, everyone should be willing to give a little, a lot.
There’s time to make it work.
___
Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for the Associated Press, write to pnewberry (at) ap.org, stay with him on Twitter on https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963 and his paintings on https://apnews.com
___
AP school football editor Ralph D. Russo in New York and sports writers Steve Megargee in Milwaukee, Tim Booth in Seattle and Mitch Stacy in Columbus, Ohio contributed to the report.
___
More advanced school football: https://apnews.com/Collegefootball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25