Health Experts, Government Officials Will Determine When College Football Will Return

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Lately, some college football coaches have been making declarations or guarantees about when, how, or if the college football season will be played.

The fact is no one knows exactly when any sports will resume, in any fashion. Part of that is it is too early to tell either way and with college football being still about 18 weeks from the first games being played. There can be a lot that changes from now until the fall.

There have been coaches form Clemson’s Dabo Swinney who has “zero doubt” that the season will go on as planned with full stadiums, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy willing to risk the lives of his football players because he thinks COVID-19 is just like the flu.

There are a lot of reasons to want college football back in everyone’s lives. It brings entertainment to a lot of people, gets the economy going with games being played in front of thousands upon thousands of people, and it will get areas back to more normal times which is what sports can achieve.

𝐍𝐂𝐀𝐀 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝐄𝐩 𝟑
𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨 & 𝘊𝘖𝘝𝘐𝘋-19
Tonight | 7pm ET | @NCAA@EmoryMedicine exec. assoc. dean Dr. @carlosdelrio7 & NCAA CMO Dr. Brian Hainline discuss how college sports can return from a pandemic. https://t.co/zrcfsn6UQS

— Inside the NCAA (@InsidetheNCAA) April 10, 2020

The big question is when college football will return and in what fashion. COVID-19 could be like whack-a-mole with different hotspots popping up across this vast country. That is one thing that can make it very difficult to make a firm decision on when we will see college football return.

Who Will Make The Call?

With the federal government referring to local and state officials to make their own rules regarding community activities, it makes it hard to say what one person or small group announces that it is clear to resume college football.

SB Nation’s Matt Brown joined KSL’s UnRivaled is very specific about who will and who will not be giving the OK for college football to return.

“Unquestionably a possibility. Anyone trying to tell you 1000 percent one way or the other is just guessing. It is a while away and a lot of things can change,” Brown said. “The people who are fundamentally going to be making this decision are not football coaches and won’t really be athletic directors. It will be mayors, governors, and university presidents, they are motivated by a different set of interests. We have already seen many of these large public universities and these schools are closed through July or August or online only.”

“To have college football run effectively, you really do need a nationwide policy. You can’t have Texas saying, ‘nope we are open for business and it is OK,’ then you have players who travel Colorado and it is not OK and they have to be quarantined. It is a big mess.”

“Right now, athletic directors are modeling if football starts on time, the season starts in October and misses a couple of games, or there is no football,” Brown said. “My best guess right now is we are going to have a football season because that revenue is so crucial in making every single athletic department work, but I would not bet that it would start as scheduled, the same number of games, on the same dates and in front of the same stadiums. We could see anything from a truncated season to one that starts in the spring.”

College football fans just need to know two things: stay away from coaches who say they know for sure for when a season will begin and also that the schools will do their best to have some form of football which very well should happen in some form or fashion.