Carifio: College football needs a better plan than wishing virus away - DeKalb Daily Chronicle

Rather than dusting off a cliche here, just go ahead and imagine your favorite saying involving planning.

That'll save time for this - college football better spend the next couple months coming up with a plan for how exactly spring football is going to work or else the chaos of the past few days will play out a hundreds times worse.

On Thursday, Purdue Coach Jeff Brohm put together a fairly detailed plan for a Big 10 season that can work and be applied to other conferences, and even includes multiple playoff/bowl scenarios.

But that's just the start. The real planning, and the real question that has to be answered, is exactly how safe is safe? What are acceptable levels of data related to COVID-19 to play again?

This can was kicked down the road since March and it's why we're here now. The plan, as it were, was hope. The plan was to wish the virus away. It didn't work.

And honestly, it's not just college football. Just take a look at local school boards changing start dates or learning plans in the same month school is supposed to start. Everyone is waiting for someone else to step in.

But that's not happening. Positive thinking is not going to defeat the virus. You can't wish it away. So if there's going to be college football in January or February, the planning should start now.

That planning can't just include a schedule. It has to balance how a spring 2021 schedule can co-exist with a fall 2021 schedule - and to its credit, Brohm's does this.

To avoid the pitfalls of this latest go-around, any plan has to include the conditions under which football can be played. Ideally, it would be great if there were some sort of governing body over football to take care of this. Some kind of association of college athletics that were national. Alas, that's just the ramblings of a crazy man.

This could really allow for some creativity in scheduling, too. A lot of people have outright dismissed a bubble as impractical for college football. But we've seen the success of a bubble (NBA, NHL) compared with the, uh, challenges, of a not-bubble (MLB).

With classes being remote at most schools anyway, it might be possible for a six-week season to be played in a bubble or two per conference. Lockdown somewhere, continue learning online, and roll as safely as possible through an abbreviated season.

Just take the Mid-American Conference. They could try to do it all in Detroit or Cleveland, or they could do the East in one and the West in the other.

Or, perhaps, they could use campus sites, with the East in Bowling Green, and the west in, hypothetically, DeKalb. They could keep their precious mid-week games. I'm sure ESPN wouldn't have a problem with a MAC East tripleheader on Tuesdays and a MAC West tripleheader on Wednesdays. Or maybe three days of doubleheaders. That might help offset some of what is sure to be a nearly prohibitive price tag.

Of course, this is all hypothetical and most likely unworkable stuff off the top of my head. But that's also kind of the point. Most of this country's COVID-19 response can be described as hypothetical and most likely unworkable stuff off the top of people's heads.

But with a couple of months of planning by both football and health experts, a plan to not only have football in the spring but fall as well could be achieved.

Hope to the point of delusion didn't give us football in the fall. Maybe some actual concrete plans can give us football in the spring.

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August 15, 2020 at 06:04PM
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Carifio: College football needs a better plan than wishing virus away - DeKalb Daily Chronicle
"plan" - Google News
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