ANN ARBOR, MI - NOVEMBER 30: Michigan Wolverines Head Football Coach Jim Harbaugh reacts to a call ... [+]
College football is history.
Outta here.
Not just for this year, but forever.
The sport will lose too much revenue this fall after the COVID-19 cancellation of games by the Mid-American Conference (MAC), along with the Big Ten, the ACC and everybody else to follow, and spring ball won’t be as profitable.
That is, if there is spring ball.
Then you have rage among college football players wanting everything from real paychecks from the NCAA to other demands through collective bargaining.
Regarding “forever,” it doesn’t mean you’ve finished seeing UGA and his doghouse, or Lee Corso wearing helmets of mascots, or Ohio State crushing Michigan, especially if Jim Harbaugh (0-5 against Ohio State) continues to coach the Wolverines.
It means college football — as we’ve known it since a dying George Gipp pleaded nearly a century ago to Knute Rockne about winning games for the University of Notre Dame in his name — you know, that version of college football will end within the next few years, months, weeks and days.
Let’s start with this year.
Brutal.
Among other things, MAC officials spent Saturday sparking a likely explosion of their Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) peers joining them this fall in opting out of playing a COVID-19 season.
Who cares what Harbaugh, presidents or senators say?
Nobody should play this fall.
If school officials don’t realize as much (see the Rutgers program with around 30 players testing positive and rising), they will.
It doesn’t matter how careful college football programs have been with social distancing in practices and sterilizing their athletic environment.
What about other environments?
ATLANTA, GA - JUNE 26: Roddy Jones of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets poses for a portrait on June ... [+]
“You have to go to class,” said ESPN college football analyst Roddy Jones over the phone from his Atlanta home, and he was a three-time All-ACC Academic Football Team selection at Georgia Tech between running the Yellow Jackets into prominence during his four seasons through 2011.
“You’re interacting with folks in the dining hall, along with a bunch of other unplanned interactions. These guys have social lives as well, and their girlfriends aren’t going to be quarantined with them. So when you introduce all the people these players will be around, whether it’s best friend or buddies outside of the football team, they may not be following the same protocols.
“Oh, by the way. You exponentially introduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 when you’re talking about a contact sport. So now I’m subject, as a Georgia Tech football player, to everything the Virginia Tech guard has done, and to everything he and his people have been around.”
That’s just for starters.
College football also has financial woes, especially among the majority of the 130 FBS schools away from the Power 5 Conference.
Courtesy of the pandemic, Akron tried to whack enough sports this spring to remove $65 million from its $325 million budget, and Bowling Green dropped baseball to save $2 million. Not coincidentally, those are MAC schools, without anything close to the NBC contract that pays Notre Dame $15 million per year to broadcast every home game for the Fighting Irish through 2025.
Even so, the big boys of college football also have coronavirus-related problems with their bank accounts.
Patrick Rishe is the director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, and he told ESPN “the 65 Power 5 schools would collectively lose more than $4 billion in football revenues (with the cancellation of the whole season), with at least $1.2 billion of that due to lost ticket revenue. Each Power 5 school would see at least an average loss of $62 million in football revenue, including at least $18.6 million in football ticket sales.”
Not good, and neither is the unrest among college football players, but only if you’re expecting these guys to do what they’ve done in the past.
Just shut up and play.
Clemson star quarterback Trevor Lawrence joined other college football players Sunday night for a video call, and they suggested they wish to have two teams in the future: The one on their campuses and the one serving as their version of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Simply put, college football players want a national organization to voice their grievances and requests.
That’s fine . . . to a point.
As Jones mentioned, “College sports is so dependent on football that if these guys are actually able to execute (a players association), they would get some significant gains in the rights they’re asking for. But you also would have leadership changing every few years, and that would be a challenge.”
Yeah. A big one. With the possibility of player strikes, picket signs and other real-life stuff involving employees.
College football is headed that way, though.
If there is college football.
