In SI Roundtable, Jack Swarbrick Discusses Reopening Scenarios, Questions
ACC Commissioner John Swofford says his league is anticipating playing football this year, at some point, in line with its member institutions declaring their intentions to open campuses for the fall. Some of them already have.
With that, half of Notre Dame’s 2020 schedule moved onto more solid ground.
For now. The status of COVID-19 will dictate those plans.
What is still to be determined is a uniform start date and the possibility of it, but that is the conference’s goal too.
“The hope is that all 14 of our schools, 15 counting Notre Dame, that everybody can be on the same page,” Swofford told reporters Thursday. “But there are a lot of decision-makers in this. It’s complicated.”
Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick agrees. The plans for reopening involve one trapdoor and domino effect after another, leading to a long list of questions that need solutions. Swarbrick and the 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners aired their lingering thoughts and priorities in a roundtable discussion with Sports Illustrated Thursday.
The nine questions Sports Illustrated posed brought … more questions. It highlighted how these uncharted waters are like a fever dream for college athletics administrators.
The attitude among universities and administrators, though, seems to be one of how to deal with a positive COVID-19 case on campus rather than preventing cases altogether. The threat of the disease has not stopped their momentum for creating a college football season in some form and their inkling to open campuses for the fall.
“Statistically, if you have 20,000 students on campus, chances are pretty good that some are coming back with the virus,” Swarbrick said. “We’ll be testing like crazy.
“The first 48 hours after arrival will be testing, quarantining and getting a whole lot of policies and procedures implemented. I really think the testing and tracing will be vital. If we don’t have tracing in place, I’m not sure how you can make any informed decisions on dealing with a team.”
The matter of how much control university administrators and coaches have over students and players is more complicated. They can implement distancing measures in dining halls, dorms, libraries and classrooms, but sticking them in a pod and controlling every hour of their day is unrealistic.
“I believe students will feel an obligation to be socially responsible,” Swarbrick said. “But are they still going to go to the bars? Are they still going to have house parties? I don’t see those behaviors disappearing from college life.”
As long as students are deemed safe to be on campus, football will follow, as Swarbrick and Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly have declared ad nauseum.
The California State University system’s announcement of its plan to hold the fall semester online casts doubt over the viability of the football season for Fresno State, San Diego State and San Jose State. While Swarbrick has acknowledged fall sports teams could reconvene for practice this summer while the university is still operating online, that will only happen if campus is scheduled to open for the fall.
No on-campus fall semester, no football.
“I hate talking in absolutes, but I can’t see doing it,” Swarbrick said. “The students have to be on campus.”
If they are, they’ll be allowed in the stadium. Swarbrick’s logic is that if it is safe for the team to play football, it’s safe for the other students to watch them. Notre Dame, if it plays this year, will play its home games in front of a crowd. Perhaps it is only students. Perhaps more. But Notre Dame Stadium will not be full, Swarbrick said Tuesday.
“We have 11,000 student season-ticket holders, and I would start with the students,” Swarbrick said. “They should be first. Second is maybe faculty and staff. Third is season-ticket holders.”
The Miami Dolphins released a spectator model in early May on Good Morning America, complete with mockups of new entrances. Team president Tom Garfinkel said attendance could be capped at 15,000 per game. Fans would be required to wear masks. There would be scheduled arrivals and exits. Fans would order food from their seats and pick it up to avoid lines.
"We would have times to come in for security at different gates so people would be separated out in terms of when they enter the stadium," Garfinkel said on the show. "We would exit the stadium much like a church environment, where each row exits so people aren't filing out all at the same time in a herd.”
Swarbrick has seen the Dolphins' plans and expects Notre Dame to do something similar with staggered entrances and exits, reworked concession stands and restrooms, and spaced out seating. Tailgating will be spaced and restricted.
“The early models we’re looking at are pretty restrictive [for attendance],” Swarbrick said. “The Dolphins model was really well done. So I think we’re going to start with a plan to be very limited. I’m not interested in a no-spectator model.”
Notre Dame sells no more than half its tickets as season packages, leaving the other half open as part of a lottery or single-game purchases. It’s possible the number of games will go down too if conferences adopt a league-schedule only model. The Pac-12 revealed it is considering the idea as one of a few options for playing the 2020 season. League member Stanford is scheduled to play at Notre Dame in November. USC hosts Notre Dame in November.
“I think it's a very real possibility,” Swarbrick said. “There is support for a conference-only plus-one [non-conference game]. If that’s the model, we’d be fine, because we would be most people's plus-one. The ACC has been a great partner for us, and we’ve got six ACC games scheduled this year instead of the usual five. That’s a pretty good building block. The Naval Academy is adamant about playing us.”
The season could kick off with a delayed start if it means a uniform start for every university that is cleared to play. Swarbrick, though, sees one danger that he doesn’t think gets enough traction. What if a second wave of the virus forces play to stop? A delayed start could create a greater risk of that. A spring season, in theory, could minimized the risk. Swarbrick thinks the challenges created by two seasons in a calendar year are easier to handle than a halted season.
“I think I’m the only one in America who thinks [a spring schedule] is a good idea,” Swarbrick said. “The worst thing that could happen to us is starting and stopping [from an interrupted season during a second wave]. If we get three games in and stop the college football season, that's a disaster.”
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