With the coronavirus crisis continuing to spread throughout the country, the NCAA is worried that the college football season may be hard-pressed to start on time. In response, some are beginning to talk about pushing the season into next year.
Some are beginning to talk of pushing the start of the season until spring to give colleges more time to prepare for the season since they have been prevented from making any preparations during this downtime, according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman.
Indeed, the University of Oklahoma recently announced it is suspending in-person activities all the way until July 31, MSN Sports reported. This would give Oklahoma little time to prepare for the August start of the season. College sports programs have said they need at least two months to prepare for the start of the season.
The Athletic noted that some schools have already cut sports programs to just football, basketball, and four women’s sports due to budget cuts.
The NCAA has already lost nearly $400 million after canceling March Madness. If the football season does not come off as scheduled, the sports authority could lose billions in 2020.
Nearly every state government has issued some sort of stay-at-home orders, and the federal government has issued a 30-day stay-at-home order. And colleges are still assessing whether or not to push their own suspensions of activities into May or longer. The situation is very fluid, making it hard for the NCAA to make concrete plans for 2020.
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