Survey: 99 Percent Of FBS Athletic Directors Think College Football Season Will Happen
Apr 22, 2020, 10:31 AM | Updated: 10:44 am
A general stadium view of Rice-Eccles Stadium at the start of the game between the Utah Utes and the Oregon State Beavers on October 31, 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr/Getty Images)
(Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Ninety-nine percent of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) athletic directors believe that a college football season will be played, according to a recent survey conducted by Stadium.
Out of the 130 athletic directors that Stadium reached out to, 114 participated in the anonymous survey. The results of the survey were published on Wednesday, April 22.
Although 99 percent of the ADs believe college football will be played, a majority responded that a delayed start to the season will occur due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Given the medical and governmental leadership opinions, it is reasonable to believe some compromise to the start of the season lies ahead,” one Power Five athletic director told Stadium.
Only 24% of the FBS ADs believe the 2020 college football season will start on time, according to a survey conducted by @Stadium. https://t.co/MZvO9mJzeW
📷: Stadium pic.twitter.com/4qIhPrdJV6
— Kyle Ireland (@kyleireland) April 22, 2020
The 2020 college football season is currently scheduled to begin in August. However, only 24 percent of the ADs responded with the belief that the season would start without a delay.
41 percent think that college football will still maintain a 12-game schedule but that the start of the season would be moved to October or November. 20 percent of the ADs predicted a conference-only schedule starting in October or November.
11 percent of ADs believed college football would play a 12-game schedule with a start date in the spring of 2021.
Although the survey showed an overwhelming optimism for the season, there was a difference between athletic directors from Power Five schools and those from the Group of Five.
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Over the last month, a larger percent of Power Five athletic directors felt the same or more optimistic about the 2020 college football season than Group of Five ADs.
27 percent of non-Power Five athletic directors said they were less optimistic than they were a month prior.
Stadium posed the question “What if the worst-case scenario comes true and the college football season doesn’t get played during the 2020-21 academic year?” One Power Five athletic directed responded, “There’s too much money at stake, it impacts too many people. If there’s no football, we will have bigger issues. This will be worse than the Great Depression and make the 1930s look like a cakewalk.”
Another responded saying, “We must play football, or college athletics will shrink before our eyes. The reality is, no matter what we end up with, there will not be a perfect solution.”
