wabashalwaysfights

I've been thinking about the first comment in bold and I'm not so sure there would be the same fan appetite for high school football in the spring. Especially if the NFL and NCAA seasons go off in the fall, even if just on television. The average person would have gotten their "fix" and would be ready to move on to the more traditional calendar. It sounds ridiculous to think about this too, but families are still going to go on vacations in the spring and early summer too regardless of what sports are being played. You stand to lose players and fans to spring break, the timing of which varies from school to school of course. And before you scoff at that notion, do two things; ask a spring sport coach what the most annoying thing about playing in the spring is, most will tell you it is navigating spring break. Secondly, look at how many people still traveled this past spring break as we went from 0 to 100 on restrictions, because I can tell you in our area it was a lot of folks. Do I still have an appetite for football in the spring? Hell yes! I tried to watch every AAF and XFL game I could. My wife, who I would say is a more casual fan even though she is more rabid than most, on the other hand? Her appetite is not near as strong. She's ready to garden come the spring. I have to remind myself sometimes that most folks out there just don't care as much about football as I/we do. They have other concerns in life. They love football when it's on, but they can, will, and do survive just fine without it. As with all this, I could be wrong; may interest skyrockets, but I don't think it's a slam dunk. To the second comment, at this point, I'm afraid that even if "social distancing" is done away with tomorrow, you are still going to have a significant portion of the population who will continue these practices out of fear for their health, whether they are told the threat is mitigated or not. That portion of the population may "social distance" for years, which is their right of course. My fear is that that portion of the population may be bigger than any of us realize.

Stax, that is all well and good, and I totally understand the financial end of it. That is the only reason I would be on board with a switch would be the financial aspects. Its unfortunate, but I get it. What I think gets lost is that again, for safety reasons, I think you would have to mirror that same schedule (6 games, no bye weeks, etc) in the fall of 2021.

Saying "if Timmy plays baseball but wants to play football... let him" seems pretty simplistic to me. I'm not sure I've ever said anything about adapt and survive, but I certainly have the best interest of kids at heart. That doesn't mean that I'm going to be in favor of some radical plan that creates more problems than it solves. Thankfully, for all of us, in not anywhere near the decision making process on this one.

This is just not this simple. What are you considering a majority? Like farmerfran said, 1-3A is going to be largely a no go for this. I'd bet that the bottom half of 4A would struggle with this too. Also, it is about the coaches too. If you offer both at the same time, you will also have coaches that have to choose which sport they will coach, and those choices at a lot of smaller schools will take the decision out of Timmy's hands.

I would be curious as to what percentage of schools in the state actually have a roster of 80+

I'm not saying I buy any of it, but I don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Sorry, didn't finish my thought as can't edit for some reason. The rest of that thought is ...but is it fair to those traditional spring sports athletes?

So let's run this scenario through; the IHSAA flips like Ohio's governing body has proposed, spring sports in the fall, fall in the spring. Another wave of this hits in the fall, as some have projected it will, and schools are forced again to close as well as the cancellation of all sports to be played in the fall, which if we flip would be the traditional spring sports. So, in essence, traditional spring sports see a full two season loss of competition. That would be awful, but would we be okay with this versus the loss of a traditional fall sport season? Financially, many would say yes because football is a big revenue producer...

At the expense of the bodies of those underclassmen going through essentially two seasons in 9 months? Comparing it to this off season being shortened isn't applicable when you consider the total recovery time from last year to this year is still roughly the same, kids just can't be involved in "traditional" off-season conditioning. Look, at the end of the day it's like Sophie's choice and I don't want to miss out on any time, but I would rather say let's postpone the start of the season to after labor day and cut a week or two off of the regular season to see if that gives us enough clearance for the powers that be rather than put the long term health of those underclassmen on the line. If they were to flip, I would want a schedule that is more along the lines of a 2 week "camp," a 5 week regular season, and then start the tournament. Then, in the fall of 2021, something very similar, but maybe a bit more extended, say perhaps a 7 week regular season. No, it's not full seasons. No, coaches aren't going to like it, but I mean, if we're going to think "outside the box" it needs to be a little more than "let's just flip the fall and spring sport seasons." Play a 9 week regular season, plus a tournament from March to May and then another 9 week regular season plus a tournament from late August to November? That's at least 20 games in 9 months, 30 in 10 if you advance very far in the tournament. That would have been a bit much for me in high school, and all I did was play football by the time I was an upperclassman. It's all a nightmare regardless...

Has anyone else been watching these on social media? Some of them are pretty spot on and funny. https://youtu.be/Ej8E0fj9Qj8

Out of the box, sure, but selfishly from a football standpoint I still don't like it long term. As a track coach, I really don't even like this either, for the short term or the long term. I can see where it makes sense for some sports in the short term, but still don't think its worth it. I'm assuming other Fall sports, like volleyball and cross country, would also be moved to the spring?

I would argue just that. And sorry, for some reason I referred to you as psaboy in my previous post.

psa, you may be completely correct in terms of the official relationship between the two, CFP and NCAA, but my best guess would be that the two work for what is mutually beneficial for both organizations. And by "mutually beneficial" I mean "what makes us the most money..." Again, there may not be any "official" dollars coming to the NCAA from the CFP, but it probably is not going to take a lot of connecting the dots to find some "unofficial" or ancillary dollars.

Never said you were uninformed, just wondered what changed.

Ravens, you seemed to be much more doom and gloom a week ago, what happned? For the "they may move the college football season back to next spring" crowd: I've said it before and I'll say it again, the NCAA pushing college football back to the spring is unviable for a number of reasons; 1) financial suicide for most athletic departments 2) would mess too much with off season recovery schedules for returning student athletes 3) NFL would NEVER be on board. You have GMs complaining about having a draft now because they can't do their normal testing/measurables, how do you think they would react if college ball is still being playing in April or May? 4) While the CFP is the NCAA's biggest cash cow, moving the season to the Spring kills their second biggest cash cow, the men's basketball tournament. They can talk about it all they want, but if they do it they cripple college sports on the whole for decades to come...

No way that everyone gets tested for this thing. Look, there are always going to be people that a)think that this virus is absolutely not any worse than the seasonal flu, b) think that this virus is on the level of Polio, or c) think that this virus was concerning, but not near to the level to warrant the reaction we've seen. Count me in category c, but honestly, it doesn't matter what anyone here thinks, what matters is what the powers that be think. If how the spring sport season went down, I think our best bet is to watch how the NFL and the NCAA handles their upcoming seasons, the IHSAA will likely follow suit as they did followed the NBA, MLB, and NCAA this spring.

Is the consensus here honestly that a treatment or vaccine is a perquisite to resume some semblance of "normal" activity? I'm not even talking about play of any sports, I'm saying people going back to work (if they feel comfortable), stay at home orders lifted, etc.

A vaccine is not a magic bullet though. I haven't gotten a flu shot in years and have not had the flu *knocks on wood* for several years. A co-worker of mine gets one every year and has had Influenza A twice this year.

Apparently, we'll know quite a bit this week as this will apparently be our "Pearl Harbor" or "9/11" moment. I take that to mean that diagnosed cases and deaths are to skyrocket. Unfortunately, as with all of this, time will tell.

From the article you posted: "Even if the college football season could be moved to spring 2021, the consequences would likely be devastating for colleges across the country. As one coach mentioned, per The Athletic, schools might have to cut down to just football, basketball and four women’s sports due to budgetary restrictions." So basically their damned if they do, damned if they don't. Again, moving an entire sport to a different season for,one year make absolutely zero logical sense in the long term at any level. The same coaches complaining now that they need 2 months to prepare would then complain the fall after "Springfest 2021" that their players had no time to recover. Stories like this, it would appear, are going to keep popping up in the absence of actual athletic events to cover.

I think you are being a bit too drastic in your approach. MLB is already kicking around a July 1 start date; albeit potentially in empty stadiums, but that still puts them well over a 50 person gathering even for the roster, coaching staff, umpires and TV crews. The long and short is this; we're in early April and talking about August and September. The way news happens these days we could literally be back to normal by June/July or be quarantined for a full calendar year. These are "un-normal" (I prefer unprecedented) but I think you have your answer with how the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season. The very simple answer, unfortunately, is that if this continues into August, the IHSAA likely shortens the fall season by a month initially, then 6 weeks if needed, to then cancelling totally. I would add too that in many ways, the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season better in my opinion than the NCAA did because they at least gave the situation some time to play out before completely axing things rather than cancelling immediately. You can always postpone indefinitely before you cancel, you can never cancel then restart. As to 7 on 7, I think you run into similar issues. As a former offensive linemen, my first thought is what about your offensive linemen? Are you going to also have some kind of offensive lineman challenge along side it? Sorry, there is no way you get any kind of extensive interest statewide. And at the end of the day, Irishman has it right. We should probably pump the breaks on anything major happening to the calendar until after we get into May. To quote Tom Hanks from Apollo 13: "All right, there's a thousand things that have to happen in order. We are on number eight. You're talking about number six-hundred and ninety-two."

I agree they need to have some sort of contingency, but do not like this for a number of reasons. First, I do not like the idea of a player ever having to make a choice like this, even under extreme circumstances. Second, you're stretching a lot of coaches thin here too. Finally, I think the long term effects for the following season are too great. Kids need the year to properly recover, so doing this would land us on a shortened season the following fall as well. I think we're potentially looking at no organized work in the summer, which I know for a lot of programs seems unthinkable. In reality however you do not NEED the summer months, many of us just think we do. Football has been played before with no summer workouts; it may have been since the 70s and under different circumstances (no global pandemic, kids were different, etc.) but it has happened.

Too bad I hate water... And Florida as a rule...

Honestly, for some smaller rural schools this is nothing new. Trojandad, thank you very much, I really appreciate it. I tell my students all the time, most of us educators are not in it for the money, we really do love our jobs and love the kids we work with, even if some of them can be a little difficult at times.