apaladin wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 12:53 pm
Don’t understand the but you can play ooc games. There’s no one to play except(for now)FBS schools.
I imagine that door is left open, but it seems fairly unrealistic at this point. I'm not aware of any schools that are able to cobble together a schedule without the support of their conference at this point. I know JMU and Elon tried.
Maybe someone manages it, but I'd be surprised.
Pat Forde has a pretty ominous article about those schools that attempt football in this environment:
https://www.si.com/college/2020/08/12/n ... sec-big-12
One quote that jumped out:
“Whatever conference(s) decides to play football this fall will be taking a ridiculously high risk they may soon regret. I know and have talked with some of the best plaintiff’s lawyers in the country this week, and they’re praying the SEC, Big 12 and/or the ACC are greedy enough to stay the course. If things go sideways, the plaintiff’s Bar will immediately get their hands on the internal financial analyses of the schools (a FOIA layup), get the conference financials through the discovery process, and then just stand in front of the jurors and point to the conferences that decided not to risk the health of their student-athletes. Good Lord, I’d hate to be the lawyers defending those cases.”
And the attorneys lining up to represent plaintiffs? “These are lawyers who’ve already slain bigger dragons than the SEC, and they can afford to finance the most expensive litigation on the planet. As a coalition, they’d be the legal equivalent of the Death Star.”
I don't see any college voluntarily walking into that, especially when the vast majority of their peers are sitting it out.
I think you have several possible outcomes here:
1. Don't play and nothing happens (decision looks bad)
2. Don't play and pandemic continues to cause major disruptions (decision looks good)
3. Play and nothing happens (decision looks good)
4. Play and pandemic continues to cause major disruptions (decision looks bad)
It's that last outcome that would scare the pants off me if I was a university administrator. Especially because, at this stage, you are mostly going it alone and would open the university up to major liability.