JustRules

Hard to say. At a minimum it would be a scramble. The schools would probably start with the 4-5 crews they hired for the Fall and keep them assigned to the same games if they are available. Some guys may have conflicts in the Spring, but I have no idea how to predict that. The same could happen if they shorten the regular season in the Fall which would result in schedule changes. One other possibility though is we always see an increase in new official when in tougher financial times. This would definitely quality. If you are looking to pick up some extra cash to help pay bills, officiating can be a decent side hustle.

I had mentioned this when discussing a shortened or no baseball season and going right into the tournament. This is an example of where the crazy all-in, random draw works. If we have to play a shortened regular season or no regular season, we can still hold the tournament as we've always done. Who knew the IHSAA was more prepared for a Pandemic than any other organization out there?

Yes, I assume the insurance premiums are in M&G. One article I read said the policy covers up to $250m which won't cover all of what was lost from the NCAA men's tournament.

I'm by far not an expert, but my thinking is those are still concerns, but we now have other things in place that can still help accomplish those things. They include additional capacity (beds, ventilators), fewer people susceptible (have immunity due to already contracting the virus), more knowledge of the virus (how it spreads, how it impacts different people), potential therapies that appear to help some people, and a more dedicated approach to person efforts (hygiene, masks, distancing). We are also coming to late Spring and early Summer when most viruses don't survive. With that knowledge and change in context the experts may still feel confident we don't overtax our hospitals by opening things up again. I still feel a huge factor in the immediate future (3-6 months) is the antibody test. Once we know 20% of the people or 60% of the people (or something in between) have already been infected will have a HUGE impact on the models going forward. The higher the number the more people will be comfortable returning to normal activities.

We already do that with a number of other things. This is not to compare the impact of COVID-19 to flu and other causes of death, because I hate when people do that to downplay the significance of this virus. But we could wipe out a lot of lunch cancer by completely eliminating tobacco. We could eliminate DWI and severe injuries and deaths causes by drunk drivers by completely eliminating alcohol. Both of course assume compliance which wouldn't happen. But we still allow tobacco and alcohol and accept that some people will die because of that. Nobody wants people to die because we re-open the economy, but it will inevitably happen. Antibody testing will help. Increased diagnostic testing will help. Isolation and contact tracing will help. Therapies will help. Vaccines will help. Some of those will be available sooner than later. I'm an optimist, but I"m also a realist. I expect students to be back in school in the Fall. I expect sports to be played (with some potential crowd limitations). People will change behaviors. People will be smarter. Those will help flatten the next curve. If the curve stays below the capacity of what our medical facilities can handle, we may have to accept that. We also have to be prepared to shut some things down again. That's the realist in me. The one absolute I do know is I'm not an expert on any of this. I'm not even knowledgeable. We need to rely on those people who are. Like it or not we need to rely on the experts identified by our leaders who we elected. Don't rely on the expert who has a web site or posts a YouTube video. Don't be a lemming either, but be smart on who you listen to.

Based on what? The budgets for all their championships are pretty tight. I've seen reports the basketball tournament generates 75-80% of their revenue and underwrites the cost of most of the other championships. If they decide to start cutting championships that would open up some money. I did a quick Google search and found the 2018-19 Financial Statement (https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/ncaa/finance/2018-19NCAAFin_NCAAFinancials.pdf). Here is what I found: Revenue was $1.12b of which $867m came from TV and rights fees; I couldn't find how much of the $867m came from men's basketball, but based on future payments I'm assuming it was around $800m (73%) Expenses were $1.05b with a net change of assets of $71m; this is only 7% of their budget. That doesn't give them much wiggle room. High level breakdown of expenses: Distribution to D1 members - $611m D1 championships and programs (including NIT) - $154m D2 members, championships and programs - $54m D3 members, championships and programs - $35m NCAA-wide programs - $150m Management and General - $45m I assume the last group is for the staff, facilities, administrative expenses. These numbers all sound huge because they have the words billions and millions, but most of what comes in is already going out. They will receive a lot less from this year's tournament and the NCAA does have an insurance policy that will cover some of that shortfall. But this will definitely be a hit for them. There is a reduction in expenses due to not holding the tournaments (some Winter and all Spring), but the biggest impact will be payouts to the schools. So the pain will trickle downhill. People much smarter than us are working through the numbers to figure out the actual impacts and things they will do to recover. Endowments will be hit, fundraisers done, and possibly ticket prices raised. But it will be an interesting process to get through.

The article actually mentions several hurdles and say efficacy results by September. Approvals will take place after that. This would be awesome if they can comfortably complete a drug trial by then, but I would be very surprised. There is a reason these trials usually take a lot of time. They don't always go smoothly with the first formulary being valid. That's why they do trials. The FDA provides a lot of validation before approval. And even with a vaccine it's not likely we'll eliminate the virus. Like other viruses it gives us an opportunity to better limit the spread.

It's just important for people to understand the NCAA organization headquartered downtown isn't swimming in money like people think and most of their operations are around compliance and championships. They are not involved with regular season games and the CFP and bowls are not their events. Many people don't understand that. They want to know why the NCAA doesn't change their bowl system to a playoff. A big reason is because it' snot their bowl season and the CFP isn't theirs either.

Money goes to schools and conferences that are also members of the NCAA, but the NCAA organization itself gets no money from the CFP. Since a large percentage of the revenue for the NCAA eventually goes to the schools you could argue it's a semantics thing.

The interesting part of this is the CFP generates $0 for the NCAA. The CFP is a separate organization made of D1 members (and I assume only FBS with power to P5 conferences and schools). The NCAA may have some say over when and how the CFP is allowed to operate, but I doubt the CFP as an organization has any authority over what the NCAA decides to do. Most likely that influence would come from the members of the CFP in their roles within the NCAA. It's an interesting and complicated dynamic that could create some interesting conflict here.

Stax...the issue with the Abbott 5-minute test (https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/detect-covid-19-in-as-little-as-5-minutes.html) is you can only do one at a time. And it involves a blood draw. Even if you could somehow get a result in 5 minutes you need to account for a couple minutes to prep the person, draw the blood, and analyze the rules. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say 5 minutes for each one. If you have 1000 people at an event, it would take 5000 minutes to test everyone. That's 83 hours. For a Friday night game you are starting Tuesday afternoon and the first person you tested has to stay there until the game to prevent from contracting it in the interim. The diagnostic equipment is expensive, but if you wanted to buy 4 of them instead of 1 you could at least cut down the time to 20 hours. With 160 football games on a Friday night you would only need 640 in the state. The Roche machine and test kits that were the first approved test available to be run in under a day takes longer for each test, but they can process more at a time. Based on information I found online (https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/products/params/cobas-sars-cov-2-test.html) you can do 1056 tests in 8 hours which overall would be quicker to test the same number of people. Would you have all those people come to the same place at the same time? What if one is positive and potentially infected others there while waiting for the test? I want football back just as much as anyone and I'm very hopeful it will be back. It won't happen with testing everyone as they enter the stadium. Mass anti-body screening will be much more effective if they can confirm (likely) someone who has been infected is now immune. If we find out 50% of the people are immune, that greatly reduces but far from eliminates the risk.

What happened this Spring or what would happen this Fall if there was only 1 year of points to evaluate? I assume nobody would move up and someone could move down if they were playing up?

You may be right. My only question about that is if did exist in November/December and nobody was practicing any social distancing how did it not spread like crazy? My guess is it may have been a less contagious and less deadly version. Whether that will be enough to create individual immunity experts probably don't know yet.

Don't confuse DT with facts. It doesn't fit his narrative. I looked up data from last year for comparison purposes. I picked the same week for both states and used 6A for Texas and 6A/5A for Indiana. Here is what I found. Texas (92 games) - average score is 39-16 with 22% the winner scored more than 50 Indiana (44 games) - average score is 35-15 with 14% the winner scored more than 50 Colder weather could have kept down some of the scores, but it general those are pretty similar numbers.

Not sure about the communism part of the comment, but he's right that allowing up to 3 yards for lineman to be legal does make it more difficult for defenses. The reason is the defense (and officials) read run/pass based on what the linemen do. If they drive block it's generally a run read. If their first step is back it's generally a pass read. The defenders will then cover the play accordingly. With RPO, the linemen will block initially as if it's a run and the defenders will adjust their coverage/movement as if it's a run play. RPO is designed to take advantage of that. NFL allows no downfield (or maybe 1 yard) so it's a different situation there. The QB is still reading a defender to determine which option he'll use, but the linemen are much more limited in what they can do. I've never thought of RPO as high scoring. That's more of the spread, hurry up offenses. Some may run RPO but they aren't the same thing. From an officiating standpoint, I'll make two points. First, this is very difficult to officiate because someone has to be able to watch two different things (the location of the lineman and the status of the ball) at the same time and they usually don't occur near each other. If one official knows where the linemen are and another one knows the pass was thrown, that information can't be combined to determine if a foul occurred. There are techniques that can help the umpire and/or wing officials try to cover both, but it takes a lot of practice and could happen at the expense of missing something else (i.e. holding). Second, it's not missed as often as people think. They see the receiver catching a pass 6 yards downfield with a lineman next to him or beyond him and think, "how could they miss that." It's important to understand the rule. It's a foul based on the location of the lineman at the time the pass is RELEASED. Earlier in my career I would make the incorrect assumption this lineman I see downfield has to be illegal. Then I would watch the video to confirm my call and realize the lineman was only a yard to two downfield when the pass was released! I've changed my approach to only call it if I know the lineman was downfield too far before the pass was thrown (HS is 2 yards, NCAA is 3 yards). Based on video review I've almost always been correct, but it has taken many years of practice. Officials at the B1G level are pretty good at it so it's not wrong nearly as often as Fitz thinks it is. At the HS level with varying levels of skills of officials it's probably much more inconsistent.

And if we only have 280 teams the bottom 20-30 would appear to be very bad football programs. It's all relative. No matter how many teams you have there will always be a percentage at the bottom with 0 or 1 wins. I've worked games with many of these teams and for the most part they still have players that play hard and have some talent. Many of them are on your list.

The biggest flaw in your logic is we get down to 280 schools there will still be a similar number of 0-10/1-9 teams and teams with low Sagarin ratings. Then we contract them. We'll eventually have 2 teams left.

If it has worked everywhere else why wouldn't it work in Indiana? In other states is almost exclusively a small town entity. There are some really small private schools in bigger cities that pair with smaller nearby towns.

Co-Ops are very successful in rural areas of other states. I think it would be a great solution to help those schools with declining numbers or allow students at schools without programs to participate.

Public schools actually pay much better than private schools.

Time will tell on Rivers. It's only a one-year deal so if he doesn't work out they can cut him loose pretty quickly. It's a fairly calculated gamble. Hopefully they keep Brissett and go back to him if Rivers doesn't pan out. He's not a great quarterback, but he's still young and athletic and could probably be pretty good if surrounded by the right talent.

Congrats to players of both teams. The south is stacked with MIC and HCC players. Is it usually like that? I hope they get to play the game this year.

Maybe this was the secret of the all-in, random draw process the IHSAA has used for years. We don't need a regular season to determine anything! Kudos to them for their foresight.

I've always wondered how to explain the term "tone deaf". I think I finally found it.

The difference is those pandemics had vaccines and treatments, plus they didn't spike in a very short time. They were spread out and the healthcare industry could handle the volume. There are so many differences between those and this one. The CDC is not overreacting. People who are hoarding TP and hand sanitizer are. I have not seen one report on the media imploring people to stock up on those items because they will very soon become unavailable.