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How will altered school schedules affect college football and basketball seasons? | Yahoo Sports College Podcast
Dan Wetzel, Pete Thamel and Pat Forde discuss how South Carolina’s announcement of an altered fall semester schedule may affect how the 2020 college football and 2020-21 college basketball seasons play out.
Video Transcript
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DAN WETZEL: South Carolina, the University of South Carolina President Bob Caslen, on Monday announced that the school canceled its fall break, and it's basically going to start on campus classes and run straight to Thanksgiving. And then they're done. It'll be online classes after Thanksgiving, and then final exams will be online.
According to the state newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, the decision to return to virtual classrooms after Thanksgiving was made because university models show a spike in cases of COVID at the beginning of December, which will be the start of the traditional flu season. The public health risk associated with thousands of students and faculty returning to campus after days of traveling could jeopardize the continuation of the semester.
So basically, they're, obviously, it's not a bubble, but they're trying to keep their kids from heading down to Florida, wherever, going home, whatever kind of. Seems reasonable. What do you, what are your thoughts on this is the state of how the 2020 college football season would play out, Pat?
PAT FORDE: Yeah, I think this is really interesting. And Jack Swarbrick actually mentioned this to me last week, and said that he thinks a lot of schools are going to do this. And I've heard several ACC schools are contemplating it. I think we're going to see more and more schools go this route. It does make sense, as you said, Dan, academically, public safety-wise. But I think it's really problematic from an athletic perspective.
Here's two things. First of all, and I'm thinking of basketball first here. If the basketball season is supposed to start November 6 or whenever it usually does, are you going to play till Thanksgiving? And then are you going to keep playing? Are those kids going to stay on campus and grind out TV inventory at a time when everybody thinks that nobody should be on campus? That's going to be a pretty bad optic situation.
From a football standpoint, you've got conference championship games in first weeks of December. That's, those things fall into the same category of, eh, are we doing this or not? Same with the bowl games. I mean, there are some problems from an athletic standpoint with what could be a good academic slash public safety solution.
PETE THAMEL: So I just think that it will be fascinating, like Pat said, with basketball season. You almost have to start basketball season with no fans, and just keep the players there. And grind out inventory was a great way to phrase it, because that's what they'd be doing. They'd be going to the Bahamas to play in an empty gym to have like, so on Thanksgiving you can watch a game at noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, et cetera, on and on and on. But it is all going to look different.
And I think college basketball should just say, we're not start until second semester. That way you avoid this stuff, and then you just push it all back. And then you have a better chance to have fans. You have better chance that there's enough science help to help you have an NCAA tournament. You are giving yourself time. And you can have policies in place. You can see what happens when someone tests positive. You can see what doesn't work when people have to stop and start. Like, there's just a lot to learn from Major League Baseball, from the NBA, from the NFL as we go on here.
DAN WETZEL: I would think with bowl games, bowl games are in trouble, I would think. Now maybe not the Rose Bowl, but like, how you getting two schools to sit there and say, you want to go to the Quick Lane Bowls, Detroit, the day after Christmas? Like on a bowl game you lose money on, all of that. I think that's going to be a really interesting. I just, I think we're going to have a 2020 season. I think it's going to start. I don't know how it finishes. I don't think it's going to look like the 2019 season though.
PAT FORDE: No.
DAN WETZEL: But I found that, that plan from South Carolina is pretty interesting 'cause I'm guessing that'll be a basis for a lot of things.
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