BTP The Offseason, Day 4: Uncaged but maintaining social distancing

Schools aren’t going to be receiving as much money as they would have if the NCAA tournament had been played, which isn’t surprising, but is a good example of how the pandemic is creating uncertainty for athletics departments.

As Steve Berkowitz and Dan Wolken outline in this story, the NCAA was expected to distribute around $600 million to D-I schools and conferences in the spring, and while there is a $200+ million insurance policy that could be used for payouts, that’s obviously way less than half of the anticipated total. For power-conference schools we might be talking about a difference of several million bucks in payout totals.

It could have been worse all around, though: if the season had been halted in, say, January, then schools would be dealing with lost revenue from home games and also figuring out how to refund season-ticket holders for cancelled games.

And if college football season gets delayed or otherwise shortened—at this point, who the hell knows—that’ll be a much more serious budgetary problem than anything these schools are facing right now.

Complications from COVID-19 are everywhere you look; this is a nation of headache-havers and will be for the foreseeable future.

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For today’s Getty search I ended up down a rabbit hole that landed on the above photo of Nic Cage from the 1984 premiere of The Cotton Club, which starred Cage, Richard Gere, and Gregory Hines.

This is just an excuse to power rank the goofy/over-the-top portion of Nic Cage’s catalog:

1. The Rock
2. Con Air
3. Fire Birds (Top Gun, but with helicopters!)
4. Face/Off
5. Gone In 60 Seconds