BTP The Offseason, Day 53: Leaping legends! College football’s logistics are a nightmare

While the status of the 2020 college football season in general is still unclear, what seems apparent based on remarks from various officials is that we probably aren’t looking at an everybody-plays-or-nobody-plays situation in the fall. There’s hardly enough solidarity in college athletics to overcome the amount of money at stake in football, and, for example, the SEC ain’t about to wait around for half of the Pac-12 to finally get an all-clear.

I figure the only way we get a uniform schedule start across the board is by pushing the season back to the spring of 2021, which is not a scenario on the table at this point—not with numerous power-conference universities optimistically planning to open to all students for the fall semester.

To date, eight ACC schools—NC State among them—have said they plan to be open in the fall, unless advised otherwise by health officials. Where this will get weird is when we get into the fractures within conferences. Maybe half the states home to ACC schools are ready in September, say, but another can’t open until October, another not until November ... what does that do to the league schedule?

We will know by mid-July which schools are at least on track to begin the season on time—players must be given a six-week preseason before they can start playing regular season games, so any teams unable to report around July 15th will not be ready for Week 1.

But I’m sure we can count on a whole hell of a lot changing between now and then. I just wish I could be confident those changes are going to be for the better.

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Schools love to honor the past with throwback uniforms, but I wish they’d honor it by forcing players to make throwback poses like the one from Paul Hornung here.

Quarterback Paul Hornung #5 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish poses for a portrait circa 1955 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.

For some reason, everyone back in the day thought these types of kinda-action shots were a great idea. Every preseason they had a leaping day, I guess. Guys just launching themselves at cameras.

“Sorry fellas, it’s leaping day again.”

[groans]

“Coach, is it me or is this going to make us look ridiculous in 50 years?”

“Y’mean more than these helmets?”

“Ah. Touché.”