The professional sports leagues will survive. They will lose billions because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they will bounce back and thrive again. But college athletics? If there is no football this fall? I’m not so sure.
“It’s a whole new ballgame if we find ourselves not playing football,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a recent conference call.
“It affects everything we do. It affects the largest part of our TV contract, the largest source of campus revenue, which is live gate. If (football) doesn’t happen, the underpinning of what we’ve known as normal goes away and we’ll have major changes to make.”
The colleges already took a mighty hit because of the cancellation of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Division I schools will receive $225 million in revenue this year, down from the $611 million they received last year. The amount the schools will lose if there is no football is almost unimaginable. A study by USA Today estimated more than $4 billion in revenue will be on the line for the athletic departments of the Power Five conference universities.
Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke and Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour have said their schools are OK, at least for now. Penn State figures to be on more solid ground because it is in the Big Ten, which has been the most lucrative of the college conferences. But then I saw that Wisconsin said it will not grant an additional scholarship year to its senior athletes in the spring sports at least, in part, because of finances, so go figure. Pitt and Penn State will honor those scholarships.
Without football, the athletic budgets of many universities will be devastated. Everything from ticket sales to merchandising to sponsorships to fund-raising will be adversely impacted.
“This is way beyond anybody’s imagination,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said on a conference call earlier this month.
It isn’t hard to imagine athletics becoming a far-too-expensive luxury at many schools. Campuses might not be allowed to open in the fall because of the coronavirus. Think about the lost revenue in room and board from students. Athletics certainly will feel the necessary belt-tightening.
Sports will be eliminated. Cincinnati already has terminated its men’s soccer program, Old Dominion its wrestling program. Many more cuts will follow.
New athletic facilities also will be put on hold. Lyke said Pitt still plans on breaking ground on its “Victory Heights” facilities, which will be funded by private support, in the summer of 2021 but conceded the fund-raising push is in “a holding pattern.” What happens if the donations dry up? Baylor announced last week that it is delaying construction of its new basketball pavilion.
There are at least two more things working against the colleges when it comes to playing football in the fall.
The other pro leagues have talked about playing games in arenas and stadiums without fans. But the commissioners of the major college football conferences told Vice President Mike Pence during a 30-minute conference call last week that they would not play games until students are allowed back on campus. Schools have been closed since mid-March when the pandemic broke, with students taking classes online.
“We were able to talk about the differences between us and professional sports,” American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said. “We talked about how academics and college athletics were inseparable.”
I know, that stance seems a little bit of reach to me, as well. Major college athletics about academics just as much as about big money? Right. But that’s the story from the commissioners and, at least for now, they are sticking to it.
Lyke said in a conference call that “the worst-case scenario would be (the coronavirus) impacting the next academic year. … If there’s a concern about human contact, we wouldn’t be playing the games.”
“College football is about the cheerleaders and the band and the campus environment on game day,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told ESPN. “We’re interested in solutions that allow us to have a traditional game day experience.”
The other hurdle for the colleges is that some states may open for business sooner than others. What if Pennsylvania, for instance, and 24 other states allow students back on campus in August and the other 25 states don’t? California governor Gavin Newsome has said it’s “unlikely” his state will allow big crowds before next year.
What then?
There has been at least some talk about the college football season being played next spring. Lyke, Barbour and the others have said all options will be considered. But they are no different than the rest of us. They have no idea when the COVID-19 pandemic will end and how much damage it will leave behind.
———
©2020 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.