It'll all be over by football season.
That was the prevailing thought among sports enthusiasts as the novel coronavirus took away March Madness, the College World Series and put all of the professional sporting world on hold. While the simple thought of a spring without competitive sports was hard to fathom, even considering the idea of a fall without football was preposterous.
Yet here we are.
Wednesday saw the Ivy League cancel all of its fall sporting events and while no Division I FBS schools have made this announcement, it seems that we are heading down the path of no return toward this inevitable destination.
On Thursday, the Big Ten announced that if sports are cleared to be played in the fall, the conference will play conference-only schedules. This decision is expected to have a ripple effect, as the ACC and PAC-12 are expected to follow suit.
While these conferences believe that choosing to keep all competition under their own umbrellas will be the best decision to limit the spread of coronavirus, it will take millions of guaranteed money out of the pockets of Group of Five schools with the cancellation of "buy games."
So where do things go from here?
The Group of Five schools are left scrambling to come up with the money lost in this decision, money that keeps not just their football programs but entire athletic departments afloat. Suddenly, a fall without football seems not so hard to believe simply because, without fans and guaranteed money, the schools will spend more on travelling to away games than they will bring in.
With a global pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, is it even worth the risk to play a season knowing you're already losing money?
A best case scenario would be the postponement of fall sports to the spring, where the possibility of those "buy games" could be entertained and a normal season could be played out. There is always the hope that fans can be in attendance should the fall sports be played in the spring.
Meanwhile, the Power 5 schools will bring in money from television deals. The rift between these two tiers of college football will only grow as the Power 5 conferences isolate themselves. The result may just be the tiers separating themselves for good.
Regardless of the situation, the pandemic has left the world of athletics scrambling. While there is no imminent threat of danger to athletic programs across the country, the pandemic has created a ticking clock that these programs, especially the smaller ones, are forced to race against to find a solution.
How these departments respond, and how quickly they do so, will affect the state of their programs for years to come.
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