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SoMnFan -> RE: Gopher Football (11/13/2020 2:41:09 PM)
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The 2020 college football season can be divided into three phases. It began with a fear-and-loathing period, transitioned to a choppy start/restart and is now in a chaotic scramble to the finish. There are 15 games either delayed or canceled this week, and the question the sport’s leaders are asking out loud is a simple one: Can college football slog to the finish and crown a champion?
“It’s going to be hard to finish, to be honest,” a Power Five president told Yahoo Sports on Thursday. “You saw what happened with Maryland and Ohio State [being canceled], and what’s happening in the SEC. The next couple weeks are going to be tricky. The numbers are trending in the wrong direction.”
The signs of the sport’s struggle are obvious. Four SEC games have been postponed this weekend. Overall, double-digit games have disappeared from the schedule for the second consecutive week. The calendar is running out of room to play a full schedule, which means leagues facing the prospect of not fulfilling their already limited inventory quotas for televised games.
The trends in college football, not surprisingly, mirror the COVID-19 trends around the country. There’s been a precipitous spike in COVID-19 positives in recent weeks, and there are few signs that will abate in the short term. On Wednesday, the nation recorded more than 145,000 COVID-19 cases, a single-day record in the United States.
“College football is a great representative of our country at large,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said. “Some weeks, it seems like we’re doing really well with the virus. Some weeks, it’s kicking our rear end.”
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