ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit sent shockwaves thought he college football universe when he said last month he'd be shocked if there was a 2020 season. He's since backtracked on that stance.
Herbstreit said during a Monday teleconference he'd spoken with several folks who made it clear they'd do everything they could to play this fall ... or perhaps even start the schedule in the spring.
"It was kind of misconstrued and misrepresented based on what I said in a radio interview and how it was taken by a lot of people," Herbstreit said, insisting he was just "thinking out loud" March 24, when baseball season was supposed to have begun. "I had just gotten back from spring break and I was talking to a friend who works for ESPN Radio, Ian Fitzsimmons, and I was almost thinking out loud.
"...I’m not making any predictions. I really wasn’t that night. I was just trying to explain how real this pandemic is and how we all need to listen to the guidelines and what they’re recommending.”
But he got people's attention.
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Since then, he said, he's talked to "a lot of people, the actual decision-makers in the college game."
"If everything’s okay, status quo, show up on campus in July, two-a-days, regular season, here we go. That’s the first contingency,” Herbstreit said Monday. “Then they build it all the way back ... the second, the third, the fourth, all the way back to the willingness to start in late February or March, turning it into a spring sport and playing in March, April and May and playing postseason in June, which would be — I think — a last-ditch effort."
That just proves how willing the administrators are with the NCAA and the conference commissioners and the athletic directors and the presidents to have a college football season, he added.
“They’re going to do everything they can if it comes to that extreme to be able to potentially have a 2020 season," Herbstreit continued. "A lot of this is kind of a feeling out process, and we’re just going to wait to see what the data shows.
"I’m going to turn on the TV [today], and I’m sure something new has happened with how to get a test for this and what makes the most sense in taking care of the athletes and making sure we don’t send them back just because we’ve got to make our bottom line. Next thing you know, somebody gets it and dies. You imagine what would happen to the NFL or college football if they hurried back and a player or a coach or a referee or somebody gets this virus and dies? That’s something they’ve got to think about and they obviously want to avoid.”
Spring football, he added, wouldn't really appeal to him.
"I like that it goes away in early February after the Super Bowl, and I love when it comes back in July with NFL training camps. It makes me want it so much more when it comes back," he said. "But this is desperate measures. We are all in uncharted waters. We’re in a world we’re trying to adjust to every day to and being quarantined. If it means we have to push it back to starting in December, starting in January or starting in February or March, then so be it. Then that’s what has to happen.
“What will be really interesting in the college game is if they have to go that far back, what guys like [Clemson quarterback] Trevor Lawrence or [Ohio State quarterback] Justin Fields or other guys, what they would do? Do they play the season in the spring, or do they opt to basically sit out because of their obvious status as being drafted? I have no idea about any of that, but it does make you kind of wonder what some of the players at that level would do.”
The obvious preference, of course, is to play games this fall, something that's still very much on the table.
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