It is now Thursday July 23. That is just 37 days away from the hoped-for beginning of the 2020 College Football season on Aug 29 (a.k.a. Week Zero). A total of 7 games were originally scheduled to be played that Saturday. Only three of those games have not been cancelled as of this writing.

Since the last BSL article published on the season, College Football has mostly been in a holding pattern. None of the other Power Five conferences have joined the Big Ten and Pac-12 in moving to a conference-only season, though there seems to be a universal acknowledgement that some degree of modification/reduction to the original 12-game schedule will be necessary. The three holdouts (ACC, Big 12, SEC) are discussing the possibility of an all-conference schedule with a “plus one” non-conference game that would consist of either a previously scheduled game (i.e., the ACC/SEC in-state rivalry games) or an unscheduled game that could be added.

The Pac-12 is planning do do its own version of the “plus-one” by adding a 10th conference game to each team’s schedule. Little insight has emerged on what the Big Ten’s plans are following their announcement of a conference-only schedule, but the addition of a 10th conference game was rumored to be an option. One thing that all of the conferences appear to have put on the table is extending the window in which they would complete their seasons by as much as 2 weeks (Saturday Dec 19) to allow more room to possibly reschedule games.

One thing that remains consistent as of this moment is that all FBS schools are still planning on having some semblance of a football season this fall. But there is an immediate looming decision that could have the impact of erasing those plans before July comes to a close. Tomorrow (Friday July 24) the NCAA Board of Governors will be meeting to reportedly discuss only one agenda item: whether to cancel all championship tournaments for Fall 2020 sports. That would include the Division I FCS football tournament. That would not include any FBS football games, regular or postseason. It would also not preclude any conference or school from playing any fall sports (though many have already either cancelled or postponed their fall sports seasons). But if the NCAA determines conditions are such that all sports cannot safely participate in championship tournaments this fall, it would almost certainly set the tone that college sports altogether should take a pause.

A brief history lesson…

Why the NCAA currently doesn’t have, and never will have the authority to govern college football, comes down to one word: money. Going back to the the dawn of televised football games in the early 1950’s, the NCAA controlled all televised broadcasts of college football. It was determined that televising games caused attendance to suffer, and thus until 1981 the NCAA allowed only one game per week to be televised. The organization also negotiated the broadcast deal with a network (most years it was ABC) and controlled the proceeds for the broadcasts. Then in 1981 an upstart organization called the College Football Association (CFA), consisting of schools dissatisfied with the NCAA’s control over broadcasts, decided to negotiate its own deal for televised games with NBC. The NCAA responded by threatening to slap sanctions on any school participating in the CFA, not just for football but in all sports. This led to the lawsuit that forever changed the sport.

In short, the University of Oklahoma sued the NCAA in US District Court to seek an injunction on any punishment against the CFA on the grounds that the NCAA’s control of college football broadcasts constituted an antitrust violation. The Court agreed, and while the NCAA appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, they lost at every turn. The CFA (which consisted of the ACC, SEC, Big Eight, Southwest Conference, Western Athletic Conference, and several independents in the Northeast) was free to cut its own deal. The ruling also led to the Big Ten and Pac Ten cutting their own deals. The CFA only lasted until 1997, when the sports broadcasting landscape had blown up thanks largely to ESPN, but it set the tone for what we have today; college football is run by various fiefdoms (the conferences) with the NCAA only having jurisdiction in enforcing its bylaws.

For that reason, no one group or commissioner can get all of college football on the same page. In some instances the conferences do collaborate towards a common goal, like the College Football Playoff and its predecessors (i.e. the BCS). But for the most part, it’s each group for itself. And based on geography, culture, and state laws/rules, the level of urgency to play games this fall is not uniform. Make no mistake, every school badly needs the money they will receive by playing. But college football fans in Alabama and college football fans in California are two very different animals. For that reason, the elected leaders in those states also have their own priorities as far as keeping those fans (voters) satisfied; whether the first priority is health, or other quality-of-life issues. As tone deaf as it may have sounded to many people at the time, LSU coach Ed Oregon really wasn’t far off when he described college football as a “way of life” in the South as a reason why they should play.

And so as we go forward, it stands to reason that this season could be a very disjointed mish-mash of every man for himself to play as many games as possible and make as much money as possible. In other words, it’s essentially business-as-usual for college football.

Mike Lowe
Mike Lowe

College Football Analyst

Mike is a Baltimore native living in Portland, OR since 2007. He currently runs his own business specializing in video production and online marketing. Prior to that he was a legal technology consultant, worked for 9 years at Johns Hopkins University and served 6 years in the Air Force. He also enjoys travel, food, beer, and is a volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society.

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