After pondering on the question for the better part of the last week, I've come to several conclusions about the upcoming 2020 college football season.
a. The show must go on in the next couple of months.
b. Cancel the non-conference games.
c. Take the next 10 weeks to put a plan in place.
Ok, let's talk about it, especially the part about the show needing to go on.
Professional soccer leagues across Europe, including nations with tricky COVID situations, are finding a way to resume their sports. The United Kingdom isn't much different than the USA in a lot of respects with regards to national numbers, but the Premier League is finding a way to run a sport with thousands of tests per week without almost any positive tests.
Meanwhile, schools like Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Indiana and Virginia are in the middle of reintroducing hundreds of athletes onto their campuses at this very moment and all of those schools have been able to mostly minimize the amount of positive tests into counting with 10 fingers.
While we're in the middle of trying to figure out in real time how to navigate tricky waters, the truth of the matter is that there are boats out there with actual captains that are figuring out how to navigate it nonetheless. None of the universities mentioned above exist in some sort of magic vacuum that's different than situations that have proven to be problematic.
On one hand, it probably shows how the numbers game can get away from you in the blink of an eye, but we have to stop pretending that what the Premier League has done in soccer is some sort of accident. My goodness, professional baseball games in Taiwan are actually being played in front of packed stadiums this weekend.
What needs to happen right now at Texas, the rest of the Big 12 and in college football is the most American thing possible ... watch someone else come up with the good ideas and steal them as your own. At this point, we don't even need anyone in the Big 12 to be able to do anything other than take really good notes. It's real simple, find out what those having success are doing and do it. Someone else can be the Winklevoss twins. Hell, we'll even let someone else be Zuckerberg. What college football needs to be is the people that stole all of their ideas once their ideas proved to work.
Given that college football doesn't appear to have an actual universal plan, I'm completely ok with killing the non-conference schedule because 90 percent of those games are nothing more than cash grabs designed to milk the common fan out of as much money as possible.
Yes, it means that Texas won't travel to Baton Rouge this fall and the make-up date for that game could be a decade in the making.
But, everyone has to get their shit together and that's not yet happened. Hell, most of college football is struggling to react to the news this week that the Big 10 was cancelling all non-conference scheduling in football. Am I crazy or does it seem like no one inside the sport of college football actually talks with one another?
That means I'm giving the Big 12 and UT most of the next 10 weeks to get a plan together. Find a way in the next month to get the numbers down to the levels of everyone else in the free world that is managing the return of sports inside of a COVID world and then find a way to get the season squeezed in.
It has to start this week.
Come on, guys.
No. 2 - The downside to a spring season ...
When I heard Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley make comments last week about him being ok with the idea of college football moving to the spring, he sounded like a man with a lot of recruiting momentum.
Hey, when you've won five Big 12 titles on the bounce, I suppose there's no reason to be in a hurry to start the chase for title No. 6?
Of course, if you're Texas and you've got a pot full of prospects sitting on the stove waiting to see if a whole lot of what went wrong in 2019 can be made right in 2020, the last thing you possibly need is signing day to occur before you can ever do something to change the perception that too many have of you.
One way or another, Texas needs there to be a football season in 2020 instead of 2020-21 as much as any power five school in the country.
No. 3 - The positives to a shortened season ...
As someone that has viewed the LSU game in Baton Rouge as a bit problematic going into the season, I think a very strong case can be made that eliminating one of the few losable non-conference games on the entire Big 12 schedule does Texas more favors than it asks for.
With that game scheduled to be played in less than two months, it seems kind of important that the Longhorns haven't yet had a single practice as a team all year, let alone one with pads on.
Slowing things down by eliminating the non-conference schedule could help this Texas team settle into a little more of a well-oiled machine if the season starts at the end of September instead of the beginning of it.
I'm all for this group having more time to bake in the oven before being served up as the kind of cake Charlie Strong used to talk about during the day.
More practices. More reps. Three less games.
No. 4 - An unintended positive from COVID for the 2020 season ...
If the sport has to eliminate 25 percent of the games on the schedule, it's going to likely need something to help boost the TV revenue that gets lost in the process.
Well, one thing that would inject a lot of money into a sport that is going to need all it can get is an expansion of the number of teams in the college football playoff ... immediately.
Inside of such a crisis, adjusting the rules on the fly is paramount towards survival and this is exactly the moment the sport needs to accomplish multiple areas of need.
Each major conference champion should absolutely get in and there should be a couple of at-large spots as well. After this season is completed, we can evaluate whether having eight teams was too many, but the money and extra spots available are 100-percent justifiable in this current climate.
This needs to be announced asap.
No. 5 - An unintended negative from cancelling the non-conference portion of the schedule ...
If the Big 12 follows the Big 10's lead and cancels the non-conference portion of the schedule, the Texas season suddenly looks quite different on paper.
First, the season would start on the road in Manhattan, Kansas. That feels ominously tricky for a season-opener.
Second, Texas would get OU in the second week of the season and while that probably favors the team not starting a baby at the quarterback position, playing that game so early in the season has a high risk/high downside potential.
Of course, if you beat Oklahoma in week two of the season it's possible that Tom Herman and Co. could make that pay off in recruiting in a way that might not typically exist for a game in October.
Take a look at what a Texas schedule looks like without any non-conference games or added tweaks:
October 3rd - at Kansas State
October 10th - vs. Oklahoma
October 17th - vs. West Virginia
October 24th - at Texas Tech
October 31st - vs. Baylor
November 7th - at Kansas
November 14th - vs. TCU
November 21st - vs Iowa State
November 27th - at Oklahoma State
That's nine straight weeks of football without a break, including only one true home game in the first four games of the season. That game in Manhattan feels a lot different as a season-opener instead of some game in the middle of the schedule that you previously had two weeks between games to prepare for.
FYI, the Wildcats are scheduled to open its season on September 26 against West Virginia, which means that the Longhorns might walk into a season-opener at a pretty significant disadvantage.
No. 6 - Blast From The Past: Shea Morenz ...
During a day-dreaming episode earlier this week, I started to wonder how different Texas football might have looked if Shea Morenz had never lost his job to James Brown in 1994 and potentially bypassed a pro baseball career in the name of playing quarterback for Texas.
Then I started to wonder what he was up to in 2020?
The answer?
He's the CEO off The Morenz Group after a 10-year run with Goldman, Sachs and Co., which began after he completed his MBA at The University of Michigan after his pro baseball career ended.
Basically, it sounds like he's done very well.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Buy) It's hard for me to see more than this getting through the doors in 2020.
(Buy) Nine unless we're getting cute and including the Big 12 conference game, at which point 9.5 becomes one hell of a question. I'd probably take the sell at the moment.
(Sell) I really have a hard time picturing it, especially with other sports returning to play, including numerous successful returns. How much leadership would that show is lacking?
(Buy) Man, it's freaking up there. Yet, as rough as it has been, I've had it pretty easy compared to so many others, and that includes my broken jaw/wisdom tooth removal fiasco of the last seven months.
(Sell) I don't know how I could possibly by that yet.
(Buy) Stay tuned. I believe many more people will be satisfied than not.
(Sell) Nah, I don't believe that.
(Sell) I'll take a look for it as soon as I'm done here. I know of one email that I haven't replied to yet this weekend, but I don't believe it's yours. Make sure you're sending to gkketch@gmail.com.
(Buy) Fo sho.
(Sell) It's probably a coin flip. I'm leaning that a life matter makes a return really tough.
(Sell) Call it 65-35.
(Sell) Even if the first part turns out to be true, I can't think of anything less I'd want to write about than 2020. Can't I just write the other book I've been wanting to write for a decade?
No. 8 - Scattershooting on the world of sports ...
... I've been all about the UFC in recent weeks, but UFC251 just didn't happen for me. When push came to shove, I decided to watch Perry Mason with the wife instead. That being said, it looks like the Max Holloway fight proved to be one hell of a talking point and even if you think he won the fight, what do you do with him now with three losses in his last four fights? Would Dana White allow for a third fight when he typically hates rematches, especially third matches? I suppose the pay-per-view numbers over the weekend might impact that. It does not sound like I missed anything at all in the Kamaru Usman fight.
... Nothing about the NFL was interesting this weekend, which feels rare.
... The return of the NBA looms and it just feels weird. It feels so weird that it makes the return of pro soccer in front of no fans feels normal.
... I'm trying to imagine how the USA would react to watching Premier League officials every week and the answer I keep coming up with is that we'd have some real nuclear meltdowns. Even the Big 12 officials blush at the mention of Premier League officials.
... I get the feeling that Tottenham fans didn't really enjoy that win over Arsenal on Sunday. How the hell did 2020 Spurs happen?
... There might come a day when I give F1 a chance, but this weekend was not that time.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Tom Cruise movies ...
Don't ask me why I picked this category this week. I just have a sneaking feeling that this could lead to quite the interesting discussion.
10. Magnolia
9. The Last Samuri
8. Eyes Wide Shut
7. Edge of Tomorrow
6. Jerry Maguire
5. Rain Man
4. The Color of Money
3. Mission Impossible
2. A Few Good Men
1. Top Gun
No.10 - And finally...
The most 2020 dog of all-time.
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