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1) College football season is going to happen. Personally, if you asked me if it's more likely to play ten games or less than five, I'd pick ten. I actually think they're going to get the whole season in. They may not get it in without interruption. There may be some rescheduling and shifting. But I think they're going to play ten football games and an SEC Championship game and some sort of postseason that includes a College Football Playoff. I never would have said that a month ago. But here we are.
2) I'm not at all sure what the postseason outside of the CFP will look like. If they get there, they'll play the CFP because the money says they need to play the CFP. I would imagine the other New Year's Six bowls will happen. Beyond that, I really have no idea. I haven't seen much as far as the cancellation of any bowl games, but I feel pretty confident that some of the lower level bowls won't happen. There aren't even enough teams to fill them all at this point in time (I think there are 80 bowl slots and only 76 teams playing). Bowl eligibility will likely be a moving target depending on how many games there are and how many teams there are. There won't be a hard and fast record where you have to be 5-5 to get there necessarily because what if there are 26 bowl games playing and only 40 teams at 5-5 or better? It will be interesting for sure.
3) If there is a season, what does that mean for the Big Ten and PAC 12? We talked about this some on GPITS yesterday. I'll link that when it's live. It means different things for different teams. Ohio State is going to be fine. It's going to keep getting top five and top ten recruiting classes. Ohio State is the college football version of recession proof. Michigan might be (I understand Michigan isn't a national power exactly right now, but they've got enough juice to be able to weather this storm and stay very good and have a chance to be a power in any given year). I think Penn State can survive. If we're being honest, Penn State has overcome worse recently. Beyond that in the Big Ten, I think it really hurts everyone. It sets back the programs like Minnesota and Indiana that were on the way up. It delays or maybe derails a comeback at Nebraska. The most interesting ones are Iowa and Wisconsin. Those are really good programs that are at times great. Can they sustain that after this? I don't know. And the reason is simple. Every coach of a team that is playing has his assistants telling recruits "They don't even care about football there." If that pitch works and kids that have choices are choosing the schools that are playing, it's a huge blow. I'm not saying kids are going to start choosing Ole Miss or Mizzou over Ohio State. But what if they start overwhelmingly choosing Ole Miss and Mizzou over Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska? That makes a difference. Have that happen for two or three years and then you're sitting in a spot where you've had three or four bad years in a row and unless you are Ohio State or someone like that, that's really tough to bounce back from.
The PAC 12 is a little different because it recruits in a lot of areas that the other Power Five leagues don't recruit as much. USC has plenty of history behind it to survive and be whatever USC is going to be. Oregon MIGHT have built up enough to stay where it is. But the rest of the league? I think it suffers.
4) The one question everyone keeps asking is "Why did they call it so soon?" To me, I think the answer is pretty simple. This is the same thing that happened in conference realignment. The Big Ten overplayed its hand. Back in 2010, the Big Ten thought taking Nebraska would kill the Big 12. They thought the Huskers leaving would torpedo the conference and all the rats would scatter to other ships. When that happened, the Big Ten would grab Missouri and Kansas or Missouri and Oklahoma or whatever. And they'd be a 16 team super league. But then the Big 12 didn't fold. And Texas A&M and Missouri found safe haven in the SEC. And the Big Ten got Rutgers and Maryland which, well, yeah.
Same thing happened in August. The Big Ten and PAC 12 thought the Big 12 was going to join them in calling the season. And make no mistake, if that had happened, everyone was done. The ACC would have gone with them and the SEC would have said they couldn't be the only Power Five league playing and we wouldn't have had a 2020 football season. But then the Big 12 held out and suddenly the Big Ten and PAC 12 were sitting there having to spend the next four months explaining why they weren't playing when everyone else was. I don't know what the fallout is going to be, but it's going to be very interesting to follow for a few years now.
5) Just playing is a victory, but how important is the record? You guys have asked this a lot. The answer is I don't really know. Again, the main thing is playing and hopefully playing all the games. If you do that, you can make the pitch to kids "We are going to do everything we can for you. We found a way to play when other leagues were quitting." And that matters. But you can't say the record doesn't matter. The record always matters. So if you have a 1-9 type season, how much does that hurt? I'd say less than it usually hurts. The media isn't going to crush coaches--especially first year coaches--for that. ADs aren't going to fire them. I even think most fans are going to be somewhat understanding about it. The key will be to convince recruits, yeah, we were terrible this year, but look at everything we had to overcome. We're not that bad. And, really, I'm not sure it's that much different from normal. You either tell kids "We're on top, we need you to stay there" or "We aren't on top, we need you to get there." At the root of things, those are the only two recruiting pitches you ever make. And they're still the ones you'll make at the end of this year. So does the record matter? Sure it does. Maybe not quite as much as in years past. That's a long way of saying three wins or fewer isn't ideal for Missouri but I also don't think it would torpedo what Eli Drinkwitz is trying to do.
