We here at 18 Stripes haven’t officially spoken on the COVID-19 pandemic over the last several months and how it could affect the upcoming college football season. It has been such uncharted territory for all of us that any speculation back in March or April would’ve been foolish at best. Mostly, we didn’t see the point in attempting to draw sides about whether there would be a football season on one extreme or whether the season would be cancelled on the other extreme.
Speaking purely from my personal point of view, the pandemic played out pretty closely to how I thought it would until the July 4th weekend. We’d struggle to understand what was going on and slowly feel the gravity of the situation for several weeks, witness unprecedented national health issues, then find ourselves itching to get back to normalcy by mid-June when summer hits the entire country.
There was a 5 or 6-week period in May and June where it looked like college football would continue moving forward in anticipation of a full season. Indeed, this is when the decisions were made all across America to bring back student-athletes as they would get acclimated to their new life on campus before an extended fall camp began weeks later.
Things appeared to have come crashing down last week following the July 4th celebrations as power brokers in the Big Ten and Pac-12 decided on conference-only football this fall in a move certain to be followed by the rest of the leagues. About 8 weeks prior to the start of the season we have reached 2 scenarios for 2020 college football:
There will be a shortened season or no season at all.
Within a matter of hours the USC, Stanford, and Wisconsin games against Notre Dame were effectively cancelled. The SEC athletic directors met on Monday and will make a decision later this month on whether to proceed with league-only schedules. If they follow the Big Ten and Pac-12 that would remove Arkansas from Notre Dame’s schedule and leave the following games:
September 5th – at Navy
September 19th – vs. Western Michigan
September 26th – at Wake Forest*
October 17th – at Pittsburgh
October 31st – vs. Duke
November 7th – vs. Clemson
November 14th – at Georgia Tech*
November 21st – vs. Louisville
This schedule is pretty awful we cannot pretend otherwise. The Wake Forest and Georgia Tech games were supposed to take place inside NFL stadiums and will very likely be moved to campuses. There are just so many questions about what a shortened season like this would mean as we move forward.
Will the MAC allow Western Michigan to keep the Notre Dame game and what happens to all of the Group of 5 programs who will be taking enormous losses without major programs on their schedules?
I’m going to assume Notre Dame would rather close the program for good than ditch the Navy game. Are we to assume that game will be played?
The ACC plays an 8-game schedule, so if they decide on league-only games will they stay at that number? If they try for more games and include Notre Dame can we say goodbye to the WMU and Navy games? Which programs from this mix (Atlantic: FSU/BC/Syracuse/NC State or Coastal: UVA/Va Tech/Miami/UNC) would be added to the Irish schedule?
Will Notre Dame be basically in a conference for 2020?
This all seems insane and so difficult to pull off in less than 2 months of planning. It would seem highly likely that the season will be pushed back into late September or October at the earliest not only to buy more time to deal with the pandemic but also sort through these issues for a program like Notre Dame.
Pessimism in college football has spiraled to fatalism. Time to face reality: “No one is playing college football in the fall.” https://t.co/XFwaYVoSLM
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) July 13, 2020
Things are trending towards not having a season and that also brings up another set of massive problems. Many programs across the country were devastated from the cancellation of spring sports and how will they survive without the football cash cow? If there’s no football in 2020 what does that mean for scholarships in 2021? Will we be resigned to the fact that the likes of Ian Book, Tommy Kramer, Daelin Hayes, Ade Ogundeji, and several more will pursue professional football dreams in the spring or will many of these players return with some sort of 105-scholarship limit in 2021?
None of this feels good. A truncated season would be better than nothing if it’s not accompanied by a massive health crisis but it will be strange beyond belief especially if there’s no real post-season or National Champion.
I have no idea what this means for our website moving forward. I’m ready to start focusing on the football season but don’t want to start pumping out the content in the coming weeks only to see the season delayed until November. I certainly don’t want to waste time writing about a season that will never happen!
It’s downright scary to think about no college sports for 18 months.
In the event something drastic like that happens we’ll have no choice but to pivot to a wider range of content and keep chugging along for our community. If any of our readers have suggestions on any topics feel free to share! Stay safe, and we hope to have more clarity on the future soon.
It seems to me that everyone is going through the motions right now, knowing that no season will be played. The ACC is indicating it will fill open spots on our schedule, maybe, but no additional games have been scheduled or even proposed, as far as I’m aware. It’s mid-July, and we don’t even know who we’re playing, or when. That says it all, in my view.
On another note I suspect Father Jenkins is really going to regret that piece in the NYT.
You’ve already done a series on the worst losses in ND history, I say you embrace the darkness; do a series on the worst defensive plays of the BVG era.
If I have to do it, I will.
It feels like a roller coaster and right now I agree that I do not think it is going to happen. Yes, the risk of health problems for most people seems to be fairly low, but the real danger seems to be perpetuating the spread of the virus. Also, when you think about it, at least professional athletes are receiving millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars to play under these circumstances — not college athletes.
Yup, the college-athlete aspect seems particularly galling when you look at it from a pandemic exposure standpoint.
Some ideas (related to ND and/or college football):
-College football is clearly being disrupted — what major changes to the game / NCAA / conferences should happen now? This could be a multi-part series
-What are some new ideas / strategies that a college team could implement (e.g., the spread / air raid has been around a while now — what possibilities might come next)?
-If, similar to the Washington NFL team, there was public push for ND to change its mascot/logo/team name, what would be some possibilities (NOTE: I am not advocating for this, just tossing out a hypothetical)?
-How can ND get ahead and take advantage of the possible new rules regarding student athletes being able to earn money?
-An ultimate ND all-decade team tournament (e.g., 2010-19 best players vs. 2000-09 best players vs. 1990-99 best players, etc.). Instead of creating teams based on decade, it could be based on coach
#2 – This would be really interesting. The spread has pretty much taken over college football in the past decade. What will the next major offensive shift be?
#3 – The Fightin’ Blazin’ Sea Nuggets, obviously.
Some great ideas. Somehow I hope against hope it will revert back to the option. Which I’ll settle for the RG3-modern style read option.
Or, is football a bit of a mobius strip where a something like a T formation or Wishbone would work again as defenses are built to stop more pass-heavy offenses?
Love these ideas!
A Premier League off-shoot blog like you mentioned on twitter would be fun, Eric. I have lots of conflicted feelings to sort through about new ownership that is in the process of taking over my beloved Newcastle.
Otherwise just make it old timey pictures! Or best yet, let’s see weekly recaps this fall of like the 1947 team or something, in “real time” as it happened. That would be a stretch but there’s enough more modern history and you guys find the best YouTube videos that I’m sure you can do something until the modern day games are back.
I’m surprised the price to buy Newcastle is that low!
Oh my oh my. Very weird to be on what looks like the right side of the ocean on this, when it started in February it was the other way around.
Having duly wrung my hands —
a. how about a series on the toughest ND seasons from the external perspective and how we coped:
— 1918 (pandemic #1!
— 1917 — WWI
— the WWII years (’43, 44, 45)
— 1963 (Kennedy, interim coach Hugh Devore, for his second stint)
b. how about the toughest losses in the BK era — explore the thesis that he does not shine under the biggest spotlight? Or, just take a real close look at Clemson in the CFP, and Michigan last year, from the Xs and Os standpoint?
c. look at ND music, kind of like Eric looks at uniforms… the four great songs, three of which are not sung any more, relations between the Band, its Director, the Video Board, Dropkick Murphy, etc.
Spinoff of (a): Old-timey college football was some wild shit. Crazy schedules, brazen cheating, vicious feuds. Maybe a look back at some of the earliest ND seasons?
I’m definitely going to take a look at something along this line.
Let’s do a March Madness of the 64 greatest movies of all time…from the four great genres: comedy, action, drama, and porn….err Sci Fi. 16 from each, match em up randomly, and we vote on best in each matchup…gradually whittling down to sweet sixteen, final four, etc. That should chew up some time, right?
I greatly appreciate the stuff that you’ve been churning out so far. The old-pictures article was great!
In terms of new content, maybe you could maybe do some point/counterpoint on ND-related takes if there are issues with significant disagreement in the writer’s room?
I think we’re going to fire up the writer roundtable, for sure.
Some other ideas:
–2020 version of “odds and updated next head coach candidates at this moment”..Which is admittedly impossible since who knows when necessary, but makes it fun to track who the risers are in the industry. Similar to the one ran here maybe in 2016?
–Any stories or details of “my favorite player” over the years. Could be a nice series
–Prospects/recruits we thought were going to be great that just couldn’t put it together
–Flip side of some of the favorite/best players that developed out of no where into enjoyable careers
–I’m a big “what if” guy, would love to see something on the Randy Moss situation, which I feel like for younger people now goes too far under the radar. (Also a built in excuse to post the ridiculously awesome Moss highlight reels)
–And kinda along those lines, maybe something about favorite player that didn’t go to Notre Dame and why. (As a small kid my favorite athlete and first real player I latched onto was Bo Jackson. More of the two sport thing and just being awesome than having to do with Auburn).
Great ideas!
That was pretty much done already, here:
https://18stripes.com/recruiting-hits-misses-defense-2013-20/
https://18stripes.com/recruiting-hits-misses-offense-2013-2020/
Yeah, that’s true. Always some overlap and it’s difficult to break into totally new territory on a blog with such a history. This is also limited to a 2013 start date and backup with the old blogs, my idea could be stretched back across ND history.
We know the stories of a lot of the recent players well anyways, going back into the memory banks, even if it’s more story-driven than data to backup with previous projections from these specific writers could be the twist to keep it fresh.
An interesting angle on the “What If” Randy Moss story, is I have read articles that mention Allen Iverson was Virginia’s Player of the Year in football as a Quarterback in 1993?? and that his dream was to play for Notre Dame. He would have enrolled the year before Moss.
Almost suggested this a few months back but Bill Simmons and the ringer does rewatchable pods of old movies; they have also done it for old games. Specifically they did 5 bulls games of peak Jordan era then he did a bunch of other era defining games of the 2000s and 2010s (2016 okc gsw; 2016 Cleveland gsw game 7, spurs lakers, lakers pistons, etc).
Anyways we could pick a game weekly and watch on you tube then do a similar write up. I actually rewatched Clemson 2015 a month or two ago then rewatched Stanford 2018 as well. I have lots of thoughts on these games and the rewatch was great. We were better than Clemson in 2015 and super talented. Travesty we didn’t have better coaching.
the 2015 Clemson game is a great one. It’s tough because you know the ending and there’s so many missed opportunities missed with critical fumbles, knowing with a different DC we could have easily won, etc.