Back in the good old days – not just pre-pandemic, but when we still got a college football video game – this was the week the season really started feeling close. The annual mid-July release from EA Sports made college football’s approach a little more tangible. So did media days, also absent from our calendar this year.
On Saturday, a normally-played season would be seven weeks away, driving our countdown under 50 days. But right now it feels like we’re all operating under a different kind of countdown, with “life returns to normal” at the end but no way of knowing for sure how many days are left.
It’s really a myth, of course. Even if all of this ends with football being appreciated more than ever, from both a fan and an economic standpoint, our “normal” will be something new. That’s true far beyond football, and one of the few available guarantees.
Between now and then, long-term planning feels impossible across the board. For a school like Tennessee – not just Power 5, but one of the most profitable programs in the nation – maybe college football could end up with an arrangement we like even more than the one we have now. We don’t have to worry about the program being shut down or scrambling to find a new conference. I find in conversations about scheduling changes, including the potential of adding two more SEC games, I’m excited about the potential to play more meaningful games in a season. So much has been upended, there will be some freedom to make new rules, and the Vols will have a seat at that table.
But between now and whatever college football will look like in the days of a vaccine, there is so much we don’t know it’s hard to build a bridge from here to there. Instead, we’re left trying to see how much of the season we thought we’d have we can save.
This leads us into conversations not about what’s best for college football’s future, but how much we can retain from what may soon be college football’s past. Maybe that’s the only thing we can do right now. But it takes us to conversations like, “What’s the least amount of football we could meaningfully play?”
In general, “what’s the least we can do,” isn’t a good way to do business. But if the powers that be wish to avoid a spring season at all costs, which seems to be the tone of the moment, then there has to be a floor on how few games they’d play in the fall for the season to still have value. Leagues that have moved to conference-only play can more easily control protocols and scheduling, a step the SEC hasn’t been willing to take just yet. But even if it’s just league play, there are different ways to pull it off and different schools of thought. Brandon Marcello at 247 did the best job I’ve seen in laying out all the different options, including the points most relevant to “the least we can do”: every team needs to play its divisional games.
Six games should be the floor for football this fall, the most likely outcome there being the Vols would play only their SEC East brethren. I’m not smart enough to know if six games in the fall is worth more than attempting a full(er) season in the spring. But I do know anything less than six games this fall should mean we punt.
There’s some thought to pushing the season back to mid-to-late October in this format, knowing you could knock out six games in the back half of the regularly-played season. But with no one expecting a readily-available vaccine by then, pushing it back to October on the front end means we’re simply hoping some combination of the virus and people’s behavior work more to our advantage by then.
One potential solution, if the powers that be in the SEC wanted to commit to six games on the front end: have East and West teams play on alternating weekends, giving each team a bye week between every game to allow for more time between contests when infection may be most likely. This setup wouldn’t be flexible on the fly, but builds in more protection:
September 5
Kentucky at Florida
Vanderbilt at Missouri
Tennessee at South Carolina
BYE: Georgia
September 12
Alabama at Ole Miss
Arkansas at Mississippi State
Texas A&M at Auburn
BYE: LSU
September 19
Florida at Tennessee
Vanderbilt at Georgia
South Carolina at Kentucky
BYE: Missouri
September 26
Ole Miss at LSU
Alabama at Arkansas
Texas A&M at Mississippi State
BYE: Auburn
October 3
Missouri at South Carolina
Georgia vs Florida
Vanderbilt at Kentucky
BYE: Tennessee
October 10
Auburn at Ole Miss
LSU at Arkansas
Texas A&M at Alabama
BYE: Mississippi State
October 17
Missouri at Tennessee
Georgia at South Carolina
Florida at Vanderbilt
BYE: Kentucky
October 24
Mississippi State at Alabama
Arkansas at Auburn
LSU at Texas A&M
BYE: Ole Miss
October 31
Kentucky at Missouri
Tennessee at Georgia
South Carolina at Florida
BYE: Vanderbilt
November 7
Ole Miss at Texas A&M
Mississippi State at LSU
Auburn at Alabama
BYE: Arkansas
November 14
South Carolina at Vanderbilt
Georgia at Missouri
Kentucky at Tennessee
BYE: Florida
November 21
Arkansas vs Texas A&M
LSU at Auburn
Mississippi State at Ole Miss
BYE: Alabama
November 28
Tennessee at Vanderbilt
Missouri at Florida
Georgia at Kentucky
BYE: South Carolina
December 5
Alabama at LSU
Auburn at Mississippi State
Ole Miss at Arkansas
BYE: Texas A&M
I’m not sure there are any good answers right now. But if we’re playing this fall, it should be at least six games against divisional opponents. Would you take a season that looked like this as opposed to trying again in the spring?
