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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 was only a matter of time before a high-profile person in the sports world said out loud what many of us are saying behind the scenes.

ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit said on ESPN Radio Thursday evening he would “be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. I'll be so surprised if that happens.”

People have been shocked at Herbstreit’s comments. While I certainly hope he’s wrong — and I assure you, he does too — I wasn’t even a little surprised. As I said, if you listen carefully to what people are saying on and off the record, a lost football season is very much a possibility as the coronavirus consumes every aspect of American society.

"Just because from what I understand, people that I listen to, you're 12 to 18 months from a (coronavirus) vaccine,” Herbstreit said. “I don't know how you let these guys go into locker rooms and let stadiums be filled up and how you can play ball. I just don't know how you can do it with the optics of it.”

I’ve heard less about the optics than I have the logistics. Here’s the concern, according to coaches and administrators I’ve talked to around the country: For now, there’s time to figure it all out. However, as the calendar marches on, time will go from being a commodity to the enemy.

Spring practices have been lost. That’s over. The people hanging on to hopes of reconvening college rosters on campus in late April/early May and having 15 practice periods are living in a fairy tale. It’s not happening.

In a best-case scenario, players can report around Memorial Day, as is always the case, have a summer conditioning program, one that would include an NCAA-allowed, NFL-style OTA (organized team activity) format that would allow for extra, non-contact practices prior to the start of fall camp.

Maybe that’s not ideal, but it would be fine.

Of course, there’s another scenario, one in time becomes an enemy. Realistically, programs are going to need a minimum of six weeks to get ready for an early-September opener. Without spring practices and — more importantly — an offseason conditioning program, players are going to need time to get into ideal physical shape.

“There’s not a lot of people who have full gyms at their house,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said in a conference call this week. “So that’s kind of out. There are some people maybe that would have access to some dumbbells or something like that in their basement, but then there’s other people who don’t. So that’s where our strength and conditioning staff is doing an excellent job communicating with them, and sent them some bands and different things, some body weight stuff, sending them some videos to help them with just how they’re going to operate in their own home. And how they can keep their strength and their weight up. Even if it’s just running down the street or whatever it is running-wise, trying to give them things based on what they have, because everybody’s in a unique situation.”

I would assume, unless the COVID-19 pandemic is a matter of history by this summer, programs are going to want to test everyone who is part of the football operation before beginning any team activities.

They would want, I’m assuming, a baseline before moving forward. So that’s mid-July at the very latest and likely more like July 1 to truly have a chance to ramp up for the season in a safe manner.

Herbstreit was asked if he were the NFL commissioner or in charge of the NCAA, what would he do? He said he would shut the season down.

"Next thing you know you got a locker room full of guys that are sick,” Herbstreit said. “And that's on your watch? I wouldn't want to have that.

“As much as I hate to say it, I think we're scratching the surface of where this thing's gonna go. …You don't all of the sudden come up with something in July or August and say, ‘Okay, we're good to go' and turn 'em loose.”

Herbstreit isn’t an epidemiologist, so at some point, he’s just one guy’s opinion. However, don’t kid yourself; he’s connected, and people inside the sport are concerned. On Thursday, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby acknowledged the possibility of no season.

“We haven’t done a lot of modeling and we haven’t done a lot of planning because I think it’s far too early to do that,” Bowlsby said. “We certainly are looking at the next 60-to-90 days and I think depending upon how that goes we’ll beginning modeling around what the fall looks like.

“It’s a whole new ballgame if we find ourselves not playing football. It affects everything we do.

“I just don’t think there’s a lot of credibility to putting together anything other than very rudimentary plans. Right now, our plan is to play the football season as it’s scheduled. If we find out we have to depart from that, we will do so. We will do it in plenty of time to let people know what it is we’re thinking and to challenge what we’re thinking.”

There has been discussions about playing games without fans, though the obvious optics of that are terrible and the financial ramifications aren’t all that grand, either. Telling student-athletes who aren’t paid to play that it’s safe for them but not safe for their families, fans and — most especially — the student bodies they represent is a bad look. My gut feeling, after talking to people around college athletics, is that won’t happen.

I believe it’s likely all or nothing, which means in the next 2-3 months, difficult decisions likely have to be made, one way or the other.

For now, all of the sports world’s eyes are on Major League Baseball, and, to a lesser extent the NBA and NHL.

On Thursday, MLB’s players association and the owners reached agreements regarding the 2020 season. Basically, everything is on the table, including moving games out of hot spots, pushing the regular season into October and playing postseason games at neutral sites into November. Games could also be played without fans, though in some markets, that’s a non-starter. Approximately one-third of MLB’s revenues come from attendance. According to MLB.com's Jon Heyman, the best-case scenario is a late-May start to the season, though most within the industry believe that’s a pie-in-the-sky forecast.

Interestingly, one of the big obstacles in reaching a deal between the MLBPA and the owners was service time. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the owners relented and guaranteed service time even in the event of a partial or canceled season.

“Service time was the vital issue for us and feel like we got that covered fairly,” Cardinals reliever Andrew Miller, a member of the MLB Players Association executive committee, told The Athletic. “A generation of players will not be held back due to service time implications resulting from a partial season or in the unfortunate event of a canceled season.”

Per Rosenthal, the players agreed to pro-rated salaries if the 2020 season is shortened and stand to lose all but a $170 million lump-sum advance if it is canceled. They also made compromises in the amateur draft, agreeing to changes for not only this year’s class but also next year’s – changes that are already drawing criticism in the industry. But the alternative, some on the players’ side point out, could have been no draft at all in ’20.

The agreement gives baseball the right to shorten the draft from 40 rounds to five. Bonuses also will be deferred, with picks receiving an initial payment of $100,000 and getting the rest in equal amounts in 2021 and ’22. Non-drafted players can receive no more than $20,000, as opposed to $125,000 previously, before counting against a team’s allotment.

The signing-bonus values associated with each pick will remain at 2019 levels for the next two years. The bonuses typically rise by about three percent, based upon increases in industry revenues.

Those moves do two things. One, it means college baseball rosters are likely to be loaded with talent in the coming seasons. Two, it all but spells the end for multiple minor league franchises.

The language throughout the agreement is revelatory of just how fearful MLB owners are of a lost season. In any scenario, baseball has to begin on or around July 1 for a meaningful season to occur. That means players must be able to report for some form of preseason camp on or around June 1.

Is that realistic, given the extent of the pandemic in places such as New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles? No one knows, but at best, it’s likely to be a close call.

The NBA and NHL are monitoring accordingly, knowing they realistically must resume their seasons no later than July 1 if they plan to crown champions by the end of August.

If those things occur, college football fans can rest easy. It might not be pretty, but the march toward a 2020 season would take shape. However, if MLB and the NBA and NHL run out of time and cancel, college football and the NFL would be on the clock.

And for sports fans, it would officially be time to panic.

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