The 2020 Football Season Dominos Starting To Fall
Through this preseason of uncertainty, anxiousness and wonderment as to whether there will be a 2020 football season, one disappointing domino tumbled Tuesday when a decision regarding reopening in the fall was handed down from California State University chancellor Timothy White.
White, who oversees a school system that includes 23 California-based universities, announced that because of COVID -19, its members will hold fall classes almost exclusively online.
This decision apparently already ends any hope for a 2020 football season for five schools because of an NCAA ruling from last week that mandates campuses be open for the fall semester and students in classrooms to hold a fall sports season, including football.
“If a school doesn’t reopen, then they’re not going to be playing sports,” NCAA president Mark Emmert announced last week. “It’s really that simple.”
The decision made by the CSU system — the largest in the country with dozens of schools and about half-a-million students — not to re-open until January 2021 at the earliest is the first large conglomerate of colleges to inform students they would not be returning in the fall.
“A place where over 500,000 people come together in close and vibrant proximity with each other on a daily basis, that approach, sadly, just isn’t in the cards now,” White explained of his rationale to stay closed this fall.
The five CSU schools that play in the Football Bowl Subdivision are Fresno State, San Diego State and San Jose State — all from the Mountain West Conference — and two others (Cal Poly and Sacramento State) that play at the Football Championship Subdivision level.
Obviously, none of the five schools from the CSU system are 2020 Notre Dame opponents. But California has been the most proactive state in the country when it comes to coronavirus shutdowns, putting Irish games against USC and Stanford in jeopardy if the West Coast trend to keep students home this fall makes its way to the Pac-12 Conference.
And if USC and Stanford fall off of the Notre Dame schedule, then what?
One story/theory suggests that if Pac-12 football is lost in 2020 that Notre Dame could potentially play Hawai'i and/or Texas A&M to fill in the scheduling blanks — two possible opponents that also have Pac-12 teams on their schedules.
There are so many unknowns to work through.
“Given the complexities of different state regulations or schools opening,” Notre Dame Vice President and Director of Athletics Jack Swarbrick explained, “it makes schedule building and figuring out how to evaluate what we’ll have at the end of the day in the 2020 football season incredibly complex at this point.”
Many BlueandGold.com readers have attended a football game at Notre Dame Stadium.
So, let’s take a step back, revisit our individual experiences, and together realize how immense the logistical challenges could become this fall on game days for Swarbrick and tens-of-thousands others during this period of social distancing.
My personal game day goes like this:
• Parked at Innovation Lot — about two city blocks south of the stadium — my 10-minute walk to “work” takes me through large gatherings of people, all bunched and tailgating together in the Joyce Center Lot.
• From there, I move through a small and busy room inside Purcell Pavilion to check in for game credentials.
• Back outside and lined up at the stadium entrance, my computer bag is opened, handled and checked by security personnel before I’m stuffed into an elevator with about 10 other media members for a nine-story ride up to press level.
• Inside the press box, all of us gather around a mutual buffet for a hotdog, some chili and a soda.
• Postgame, it’s back onto a packed elevator — this time with everybody leaving at the same time — for a trip down to field level. The sidelines are active and crowded, as is the cramped post-game interview room, where Irish players are scattered throughout, each with a media mob huddled around them.
Notre Dame will do everything to protect its players and patrons, but proper distancing practices on a game Saturday are unrealistic, even with added health initiatives and safeguards, right down to game attendance.
“What do we want capacity to be?” Swarbrick rhetorically asked, loosely suggesting 50-percent inside the 78,000-seat stadium. “How will we define capacity in the new normal for the coming season?”
Several schools from around the country have bucked the CSU system’s decision to stay closed this fall and already announced they will open and be prepared for an on-time start to the football season.
Notre Dame has yet to make such a proclamation. Each school, conference and state will face their own unique decisions based on regionality, local coronavirus infection rates, and countless other factors. One way or another, 2020 will be a season like no other.
“You can’t produce a season where all members are participating in Division I football in the same way,” Swarbrick explained. “We just have to take the time to figure it out as we go.”
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