Advertisement
football Edit

Food For Thought, presented by The Iron Horse Grill: Will we have football?

The Iron Horse Grill is a perfect locale for galas, rehearsal dinners and more.
The Iron Horse Grill is a perfect locale for galas, rehearsal dinners and more.

It’s amazing how much the world has changed in a week.

One week ago, I was preparing to drive to Fayetteville, Ark., to move my daughter, Campbell, out of her dorm at the University of Arkansas.

We drove home Saturday, unloaded her car and my truck and began living in a world none of us have ever really lived in before.

Honestly, my world hasn’t changed that much. I have stopped going to the gym. I’ve created some alternative workouts. I’ve run a little more. I have played some MLB The Show 2020 on Carson’s PS4.

We have begged our children not to go into others’ homes or get into others’ cars. We have worked to stock some food and such. I made a significant beer run. I’ve walked the dog more. I’ve FaceTimed more. We’ve tried to simply stay as calm as possible.

I have tried not to worry about my work, but I won’t lie; I’ve lost sleep thinking about what might happen. We’ve continued our podcasts (actually getting better numbers than we have in a long time) and producing content here on RebelGrove.com. I’ve tried to maintain hope in humanity and in my fellow man. We’ve tried to support local businesses as much as possible. I keep telling myself it’s going to be OK and that we’ll get to the other side.

Advertisement

I’ve also resisted the urge to go through the computer and cyber-punch the people who keep asking about spring football. Let’s make this clear: There won’t be spring football. It’s not going to happen. There is no chance.

At this point, from a sports perspective, and certainly from a college sports perspective, we should all just be hoping for the 2020 season. That’s it. If you want to be greedy, in my opinion, you can hope for some sort of extended preseason camp, maybe one that begins in mid-July instead of early August, but the overriding home is simply for a 2020 season.

“Our focus is on preparing for the 2021 academic year, the fall seasons, as currently scheduled, so there’s a period on the end of that sentence,” Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey said earlier this week. “Well obviously, I think about everything going forward because we’re being guided by public health information in decision making, but my hope is we can return to our normal organized activities, our normal experiences and be part of that celebration around soccer or volleyball, cross-country, football in the fall. But, we’ll have to see.”

Sankey was asked a follow-up about his optimism that the fall will include SEC football.

“I’m a half-full perspective person, so I have optimism,” Sankey said. “We have taken measures as have our colleague conferences, at this time, I think that if I read those health leaders, we’re going to have a period of time to see what happens with the growth of these cases and we’ll make decisions down the road.

“So, for me, my responsibility is to continue to support the public health decision making, but also to be prepared to do our work as assigned to us, and we have – we’ve categorized things.

“One is to be focused, one, on the work we have. The second is to make sure we’re prepared for next year as planned. And the third is to engage in big picture thinking which is contingency planning, but also, strategic planning.

“And as we adjust to the fact that no-one’s complaining to me about umpires right now and that opens up a little bit of space, we want to use that time wisely. I did – we had a baseball coach’s conference call. When I joined, I said I’d much rather be talking to some of you about baseball umpiring problems over the weekend than what we’re talking about now, but as we adjust to this new normal, we’re going to be thinking about a lot of things.”

Sankey is a smart man, a gifted public speaker. He knows the power of words. The lack of definitiveness and bold confidence in his words was, in my opinion, intentional.

Former Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy will be named the new head coach at UAB, as early as today, per multiple reports.

I couldn’t be happier for Kennedy. Over the past couple of years, he and I spoke several times about his broadcasting career. He is phenomenal, both court-side as an analyst and also in the studio. He is a natural. ESPN knew it, and the network wanted to keep him and move him into a more visible role.

However, the desire to coach still burns for Kennedy. It never went away. After 12 seasons at Ole Miss, he knew it was time for change in Oxford, but he wasn’t ready to walk away from the thing he loves most.

I expect he will do well at his alma mater. That’s a good league, and UAB can be a strong program.

Broadcasting will wait on him, I suspect. He’s that good at it, but for now, I anticipate a fully-charged, revved-up Kennedy to do some big things in Birmingham.

This should be required listening today, in my opinion. It’s just 16 minutes or so, and it’s powerful radio.

We’re all going through an incredibly stressful, difficult time, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re all taking economic hits, but we have to try to make the minimizers take this thing seriously — even if, as I mentioned above, it’s for no other reason than to save a football season.

I wish you all a wonderful, healthy weekend.

I’ll leave you with this really funny bit from Ole Miss grad Heather McMahan. If you love the Food Network as much as I do, you’ll get a kick out of this.

Advertisement