Start blaming the Ivy League now [OP EDITED]

Submitted by mgohusker on July 6th, 2020 at 6:58 PM

https://theathletic.com/1911122/2020/07/06/will-college-football-season-actually-happen-this-fall-ivy-league/

Ivy League’s impending decision could be a ‘big domino’ for college football

By Bruce Feldman and Nicole Auerbach
Jul 6, 2020

An impending choice by a conference that plays in the Football Championship Subdivision could have an impact that stretches across college football.

College athletics is bracing for the Ivy League’s decision regarding fall sports in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, an announcement that is expected to come down on Wednesday. Multiple football coaches in the Ivy League told The Athletic over the weekend that they expect Wednesday’s announcement to be that the league is moving all fall sports, including football, to spring 2021. The coaches spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conference has not announced its final decision.

“In order to have an effective season without hiccups, time is the answer,” one Ivy League coach told The Athletic. “If we play in the spring, it won’t bother me.”

(Edit:  I just finished removing the remainder of the article.  For obvious legal reasons, please DO NOT copy and paste entire articles, whether or not they are paywalled)

Broken Brilliance

July 6th, 2020 at 7:07 PM ^

Thanks for leaking the athletic's onlyfans content.

I barely follow FCS but I didn't know that the ivy didn't participate in playoffs.

If there's a few token football games in the spring, I won't be mad at that. I bet you see more uniformity in the conferences with an actual postseason.

Broken Brilliance

July 6th, 2020 at 7:07 PM ^

Pppptthhht raspberry.

Let me use this double post as an opportunity to express that I will be totally miserable if football is postponed. Miserable for over four fucking months. I will not spend the months of July and August handwringing or being neurotic because the mike florios of the world need clicks. On the day the word comes across my twitter feed, I'll deal with those feelings then.

Rabbit21

July 6th, 2020 at 7:12 PM ^

Well like my Grandmother said when she got her Ovarian Cancer diagnosis, "At least I know how I'm going to go."

College Sports are dead if this happens, but at least we'll know why it happened.  

Wolverine Devotee

July 6th, 2020 at 7:17 PM ^

Yup, if there’s no football season soon my interest level is going to plummet.

Hard to be devoted to something that never happens. Not having sports since March has been very kind to my bank account. 

Those in the know know we’ll be playing though. I’m not worried about it. The schedule will look much different. 

Perkis-Size Me

July 6th, 2020 at 7:34 PM ^

You’ll be back. So will everyone else who claims their interest goes away or it’ll never come back. Same as the people who say “Ohhh if they NFL does this I’ll never watch another game ever again.” And then, regardless of what happens, they’re right back where they were, cheering their team on during Week 1.

Sports will come back. When, no one knows for certain. And it’ll be even longer before sports as we knew them come back. But make no mistake: they will come back. And you’ll come back too because everyone else is going back and you don’t want to be the one missing out on the fun. 

I don’t doubt that no sports has been kind to your bank account, but knowing your particular level of fanaticism with all things Michigan, I call BS on your interest level plummeting on any kind of long term basis. 

bluesalt

July 7th, 2020 at 12:26 AM ^

I have watched maybe two NHL games since their cancelled season 15-20 years ago.  I used to watch it multiple times per week, but it went away, I found other things to fill my time, and I realized I didn't miss it.  Some fans will probably be lost should there be a cancellation.

Solecismic

July 7th, 2020 at 2:27 PM ^

I pretty much stopped watching baseball after 1994. Tried to get back in around the turn of the century, but the love had died. I don't think I've watched more than a couple of batters at a time since.

Basketball's probably taken a big hit for me - I didn't feel any loss when the tournament was canceled. But I think football is rooted too deeply. This will be a tough year - programs won't compete unless kids sign waivers and kids probably shouldn't sign waivers. Plus the lost development time will be enormous - it won't be the same game in terms of strategy and player development. I think we'll end up only having the NFL this fall, and odds are many players will get sick - hopefully none seriously.

With the budget crunches and the cost of sports programs and the uncertainty, with many universities already planning on mostly online learning, I think the university sports model will be quite different in the future. Maybe sports no longer makes sense at many places. Except e-sports, of course. Most of the MAC is committed to fielding teams (many players on scholarship for this) playing League of Legends. Tomorrow's athletes will never even need to leave their parents' basements.

Hail-Storm

July 7th, 2020 at 10:59 AM ^

If the Lions still have devoted fans after decades of Lions Football, then I don't understand why college football can't withstand a delayed season.

I did stop watching the Indy 500 after the strike in the 90s, but that also coincided when I went to college and got really busy.  I will come back to Michigan football when it comes back and be excited to cheer them on.

bronxblue

July 6th, 2020 at 10:08 PM ^

I don't quite understand the argument that you won't follow college football going forward if they don't...proceed with a truncated season involving unpaid college athletes while the country is dealing with a deadly pandemic and, at best, slapdash protections in place for the athletes.  Like, if you'll follow college athletics after numerous teams and players get busted for performance enhancement abuse, covering up sometimes horrific crimes, latent and active racism, and a slew of other maladies, I severely doubt you'll close up shop because you miss one season of football due to a once-in-a-generation global pandemic.  But hey, you do you.

Wolverine Devotee

July 6th, 2020 at 7:14 PM ^

The Ivy League voluntarily holds its champion out of the FCS postseason because it interferes with academia. 

Let me know when a conference people actually care about does this. 

TrueBlue2003

July 6th, 2020 at 7:29 PM ^

Exactly.

They pay money to play football so why would they pay to play in this environment?  They save money by not playing. They don't have TV contracts and huge AD budgets as obligations. 

For conferences that make money to play football (and for players that are trying to become professional), I think this means pretty much nothing.

The money equation is completely flip flopped for the Ivy league compared to Power Conference FBS.  

thelomasbrowns

July 6th, 2020 at 7:26 PM ^

Turns out the LIBERATE MICHIGAN! tweet was about liberating fans from another tortuous football season.

LV Sports Bettor

July 6th, 2020 at 7:42 PM ^

The sun belt has more of an impact then the ivy league due to the fact they are actually division one

crg

July 6th, 2020 at 7:45 PM ^

Involving Larry Scott in an important decision that could potentially affect tens of thousands of people's lives and livelihoods... I'm concerned.

Bo Harbaugh

July 6th, 2020 at 7:46 PM ^

As I stated in another thread but I have been hesitant to post since I don't work for the school and only get info 2nd hand from a regent and a mid-level employee for UMs AD...

The scheduling is going to be a complete cluster - f*ck.  This is the biggest issue the AD is working with right now, as the smaller revenue schools don't have the same skin in the game to put a product on the field.  

My friend claims that they may need to have open dates on the schedule and literally do in-season scheduling based on who is open and willing to play at the time (like scheduling teams 2-3 weeks before a game). 

Smaller schools (the ones generally paid to play cupcake games) are also asking the big schools to cover the extra costs associated with Covid regulations being put in place if they are going to indeed play, as it may not even be break even for many of them to go forward with a season in the current situation.

I spoke with him over the weekend and he says we will be lucky to get to 8 games now.  He was more optimistic 2-3 weeks ago before the latest spike. On the flip side, the regent I spoke with always said and still feels there is only a 25% chance we have a season that starts this fall.

Per the AD contact, the B1G teams he knows that are seriously considering opting out of the season are Rutgers and Maryland.  NW does not want to play any games outside their division - I'm not sure what the logic is there (division vs. conference).

That's all I was able to pull out of him - I'm sure he knows a lot more that he can't share.

TrueBlue2003

July 6th, 2020 at 8:31 PM ^

I feel like scheduling headaches can be reduced greatly by doing away with non-conf games.  Then you don't have to worry about buy games.

So then the issue is what to do with teams that don't want to play a full conference slate.  Not surprising re: Rutgers and Maryland.  They don't play even when they're on the field, not much different to just not show up, I guess.  My guess for them and NW is that they have an issue with travel.  For the east coast teams air travel is necessary every game and for non-division games for NW, the travel is further.

Any idea if TV network payouts would be tied to number of games played?  Gotta think they'll do what will get them paid and if there's no monetary incentive to play (since there won't be fans), why spend the money and take on the liability?

 

4th phase

July 6th, 2020 at 9:51 PM ^

I think a 6-8 game schedule where the team plays every other week makes sense. Then you have time to get test results. If two big ten teams opt out you can divide everyone into three 4 team pods and play home and homes. Then pick 2 MAC schools that play those same teams once and get 4 pay days and play each other in a home and home. So now instead of every team in the country having contact with every other through 6 degrees of separation, every team has only had contact with 5 others. The whole country can be in these 6 team groupings where power 5 plays 8 games and non power plays 6. If all that works out flawlessly then you just play 10 bowl games with the top 20 teams. Then you can play a CFP final picking from the 10 bowl winners if you really want to. 

Sambojangles

July 6th, 2020 at 7:56 PM ^

Spring football would be strange and unfortunate, but certainly preferable to a bastardized fall season with multiple teams unable to compete and weird schedules. If planning for that now significantly increases the chance of a season happening then I think that's probably the smart thing to do. How wild would April be, if the Final Four, Frozen Four, then CFP happen on 4 straight weekends? 

Also, OP should edit out most of the Athletic article and focus on the big items. Posting the whole article is plagiarism and bad mmmkay?

TrueBlue2003

July 6th, 2020 at 8:36 PM ^

The problem with spring football is there's no guarantee or really even any reason to believe it'll be better to play in the spring.

There won't be a vaccine.  So what's going to be better?  This is going to spike in the north in the winter when everyone goes back indoors.  It won't be less risky in the spring so they shouldn't consider that as a superior option when making fall decisions.

bsand2053

July 6th, 2020 at 8:18 PM ^

Please don’t copy entire articles.

Also, there’s really a limit on how many games you can play on the spring.  You can’t ask these kids to play 8-12 games in the spring and expect them to do lay a full slate next fall.  Maybe you could get pros to do it but not students.  
 

If t or season has to be played in the spring, maybe just have the divisions play and do the conference championship and leave it there.  I don’t want these kids to have to pack in that much physical punishment in a single year 

maizenblue92

July 6th, 2020 at 8:21 PM ^

Beyond the copyright infringement in this post. Don't blame the Ivy League for football not happening. Blame everyone who didn't/doesn't wear a mask, blame the yahoos that protested at state capitols for reopening because they couldn't get a haircut for a few weeks or yell at a server, blame everyone that tried to downplay it as "just like the flu" because that helped enable the spread, and most of all blame the current presidential administration for sitting on their thumbs for months and doing nothing about it when other countries were locking down, putting contact tracing into place and everything places like South Korea were doing when this broke out. 

maizenblue92

July 7th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^

I've heard the opposite. Most protesters are pretty good about wearing masks and the studies being done on them are showing that very few cases are spreading as a result of protests. In fact, about a month ago a warning was spreading on twitter that the right is going to try and use the protests as the reason cases are up. Because, the right always knew cases were going to spike because reopening is happening too soon. It was a convenient reason to satiate their base with.

TrueBlue2003

July 7th, 2020 at 1:08 PM ^

The protests had a negligible impact. This is why Minneapolis and New York and Detroit and Seattle and many other cities that participated heavily in the protests are not experiencing spikes.

For one, only a negligible number of people participated and two, they were outdoors moving down streets where they could space and they were mostly wearing masks.