With the sports world on hiatus, one prominent commentator has floated the idea that football might not happen in 2020.
It almost seems unfathomable, yet we have seen the subject broached this past week when ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit went on to say he thinks fans might not see college or pro football in 2020. While such a scenario is possible, time is on the side of fans of both college and the NFL.
Entering the last few days of March has seen a complete halt in the sports world. While Major League Baseball and the NCAA college basketball tournament should be center stage, sports fans are left with what could have been. The NFL, to their credit, has kept the fanbase engaged with something to talk about given a news-breaking round of free agency and a draft that looks to be solid in late April.
That’s a positive, and something that makes what Herbstreit says, at best, remote, at least from the NFL perspective.
First, it’s worth reminding fans that the NCAA and the NFL are different business models. While college sports, especially the cash cow NCAA tournament were brought to a halt, commissioner Roger Goodell kept the lights on in Manhattan and across the NFL platform with both free agency and allowing the league season to begin. While team facilities have been closed, the league is on record saying that the NFL Draft will go on as scheduled, though radically altered from its original Las Vegas plan, at least for now.
After that, it is a guess where the roadmap takes the league. That said, a lot will happen between now and August when the NFL begins to ramp up to the regular season. As for the NCAA, it really is hard to say where they go from being all but shuttered, to getting back on the field.
Herbstreit offered an opinion based on a real-time landscape that is an absolutely open-ended question. To effectively prognosticate where both respective business models will be later this year is akin to guessing lottery numbers accurately. With a story that is changing by the hour, no one, not even Herbstreit, can be an authority on the subject.