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Is Next Season In Jeopardy?

With spring sports cancelled, UNC Coach Mack Brown weighs in on the possibility there may not be a football season next fall.
With spring sports cancelled, UNC Coach Mack Brown weighs in on the possibility there may not be a football season next fall. (Jacob Turner, THI)

With the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo now officially moved to 2021 and talk that Major League Baseball may never get off the ground this season, might the 2020 college football season also be in jeopardy because of the coronavirus pandemic that has forced closures and cancellations around the world?

The chatter certainly includes not having a football season.

“Some question whether we’ll be able to have a full football season,” UNC Coach Mack Brown said, during a virtual press conference Monday. “Some question as to whether we’ll be able to have any football season. Some have talked about canceling the out -of-conference games and just having the conference games.”

As it stands, all team-related activities for the spring have been cancelled by the ACC, which includes spring football, which was slated to commence March 17 with a spring game on April 18.

Most every Tar Heel is back home taking online courses at UNC and doing their best to get in conditioning and weight training. Strength and conditioning coach Brian Hess is leading the way with a variety of virtual workouts online.

They are preparing to play football, but nobody really knows when the sport will resume, either if the NCAA allows for a late spring or summer practice period, tacks on a few days to fall camp or even stages a season of some kind.


Expectations are high this coming season for Sam Howell (pictured) and the Tar Heels.
Expectations are high this coming season for Sam Howell (pictured) and the Tar Heels. (Jacob Turner, THI)
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Brown is moving forward as if things will eventually fall into place and there will be a season, though it may include an altered schedule. The preference, of course, is for everyone to play 12 games.

“We also have to look at having a full season,” Brown said. “If it's not a full season, we can adjust down, but it's hard to adjust up if you're not prepared. So, we're fully preparing to have work this summer and we're fully preparing to have a full preseason and a season like normal when we get to the ball.”

Brown isn’t the only ACC coach to host an online press conference since social distancing became a thing in the nation. Virginia’s Bronco Mendenhall held one on March 19 and also discussed a few ideas with respect to some options for next fall.

“I think the first step would be to possibly eliminate non-conference games from the schedule, our early season or preseason games, and only play a conference schedule,” he said. “I think that’s the first alternative. …

“That’s just one of the thoughts I have knowing that you would need a fall camp to prepare to play, that might take the place of your preseason games, if football became possible and important enough for all involved to try to pull it off in some manner.”

While not nearly as important as the death and long term damage COVID-19 can cause, there are widespread ramifications of cancelling college football games, especially if there’s no season at all.


Celebrations like this next fall will have a lasting effect on UNC's athletic department.
Celebrations like this next fall will have a lasting effect on UNC's athletic department. (Jacob Turner, THI)

According to published reports, the football program generated a surplus of $22.4 million during the 2017-18 athletic year, seven million more than men’s basketball. And that’s considering the team suffered through a 3-9 record and played to numerous empty seats.

Kenan Stadium was sold out for every game last fall and capacity crowds were on hand for all but the Mercer game. And with so much excitement heading into this coming season for the team and some of its high-profile players, full houses and additional revenue would surely soar past the 2018 figure.

Considering football helps fund most of the non-revenue sports, the effects of not playing the season would be felt throughout the athletic department and beyond.

“There’s a great concern because of the revenue that comes in with football,” Brown said. “If we don’t have a fall or a full fall, what does that do to our athletic departments across the country?

“And we’ve still got to pay cost of attendance and we’ve still got to pay scholarships, but we don’t have any money coming in, and football is the provider in many of those cases.”

If there’s a full season, the Tar Heels open at Central Florida on Sept. 4 before facing Auburn in Atlanta a week later. Fall camp likely would begin on one of the first few days in August.

Whether or not the Tar Heels and the rest of the college football world is back at it by then, nobody knows.


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