Time for ACC presidents to offer some football clarity amid COVID-19 uncertainty
Trying to figure out what to do about college football this fall is like going down a staircase in the dark. You’re not going to move quickly, let alone jump to the bottom all at once. You’re going to go step by step, one at a time, feeling it out, moving slowly.
That’s what the ACC’s Council of Presidents will be trying to manage when it meets Wednesday, as pivotal a moment as we’ve had yet when it comes to whether or not football will be played this fall, at least in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
There are a plethora of options available to the 15 presidents and chancellors, from pushing back the start of the season to adopting the 10-plus-1 scheduling model that’s been bouncing around — and to more extreme (if unlikely) options.
It’s important to remember: No matter what coaches or ADs say, the presidents will call this shot. Unlike athletic directors, who are usually pretty transparent and predictable, academic leaders can be a bit of a wild card in these situations.
They’re the ones, above all else, who will have to rationalize bringing athletes back to campus in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic when it’s been deemed unsafe for many students — and accept the responsibility for that decision if it backfires.
But with ACC schools planning to start actual training-camp practices next week, the time has come for at least some kind of a decision, some sort of clarity from the conference’s leadership.
Meanwhile, no one is even talking about basketball yet, the pulse of the conference, and for some ACC schools an even bigger driver of revenues than football.
That’s not necessarily a problem for the conference — as long as the games are played, not a given, the ACC can collect and distribute the television money and capitalize on the network’s existence — but playing football or basketball in empty or almost-empty stadiums and arenas would have massive financial impacts on the schools themselves.
So there will be a push from below to return to competition under conditions that allow that, which may not necessarily be congruent with what’s best for the ACC. Even then, reality is making itself known. North Carolina announced its plan for reduced capacity at Kenan Stadium on Monday, another step down a different staircase.
It’s a fascinating dynamic even before Notre Dame gets plugged into the mix, with the expectation that the Irish will be considered a full, if temporary, conference member in football as part of the ACC’s preferred COVID-19 contingency plan. It will be interesting to see what conditions, if any, the ACC extracts from Notre Dame (and NBC!) for essentially saving its football season.
The ACC’s half-pregnant arrangement with Notre Dame has been a huge net positive for the ACC, but there’s still a lot of having-it-both-ways going on here for the Irish. And the ACC absolutely cannot let the Irish join up when it’s convenient and cherish its independence when it’s not.
The most likely minimum outcome of Wednesday’s meeting is a push of the start of the season back to mid-September. That would buy the ACC time to figure out what’s next and further pursue its preferred scheduling model, which would see each team (including Notre Dame) play 10 conference games and one nonconference game, the latter to preserve longstanding rivalry games like Clemson-South Carolina and Georgia Tech-Georgia.
Teams without a rivalry game like that — which includes all four North Carolina teams — would have to arrange an 11th game on their own. That’s a less radical option than a pod model that would see groups of four or five teams play home-and-home series. Even if the presidents go that route, it will take a day or two to come up with an entirely new schedule, which would be necessary.
And maybe another day or two to plan the Very Special ACC Network Schedule Reveal Show. (Or another month or two, if last year’s basketball reveal is any indication.)
Even if a schedule format isn’t finalized Wednesday, that’s the next step down the staircase. Another step down. Another interim position. Another attempt to forestall what may very well be the inevitable.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 2:03 PM.
