The ACC released a wonderful conference schedule that matches the Miami Hurricanes up with an opportunity to beat Clemson. Notre Dame is an ACC football member in 2020 but unfortunately not matched up with Miami.
Not having Notre Dame on the 2020 schedule is somewhat disheartening as the greatest victory the Miami Hurricanes have had in the last several years has come at the expense of humiliated and embarrassed Notre Dame team. Having been to the last three games against them in person I can assure you they live up to the hype.
Miami Hurricanes fans hate Notre Dame and Fighting Irish fans hate each other and that makes for a great football game. With the season schedule set, the question now remains is whether or not the first game will be played in September or pushed off at some point in the future.
Based on the continuing trend of nearly 10,000 cases if not more every day in Florida many might question if this is going to be wise. Compared to a sport like baseball where there is minimal contact it’s easy enough to know that football is very much a contact sport.
Many questions have been raised when the Florida Marlins were unable to keep their team COVID free. There are certain protocols that can take place that would easily allow for college football to happen. This would include frequent testing of the players, coaches and support staff.
The real problem the Miami football team is going to have along with all of the other Hurricanes athletic programs is that for the game to be played every player and every staff member of all teams needs to be COVID free. This can be done by isolating the players that already are double-tested as being COVID free but that’s the easy part.
To really make college football really safe you have to have a situation where the players and personnel all are willing to be quarantined for up to 13 or 14 weeks. This means no going out anywhere unless it’s as a team and in an environment that is secure.
For this to work all the players on every team have to consistently test negative throughout the entire season so if one player test positive that could mean games for the next two weeks are either postponed, forfeited, or canceled.
Given the right circumstances and conditions there is no question that football can be played safely but what remains a very difficult question is how the players would feel about the conditions necessary to achieve the level of safety that would be required.
When you are talking about professional sports it’s a little bit of a different situation as players are being compensated for their work and efforts so if the price of earning that paycheck comes with very significant for features of freedom to do as they want it may be a price worth paying.
When you start to deal with college athletes it’s a totally different story. Many of them are on scholarship but not everyone is on scholarship. There are many players on a team that contributes in a very meaningful way during practice.
Just because walk-ons don’t suit up to play or see much playing time that doesn’t take away the importance of the role they have on the team. For some of these players who are not on scholarships where does that leave them?
The logistics of how college football could be played is something that has been talked about a great deal and while it’s possible it may not be feasible. Certainly, we can say that for Florida we may be testing 10,000 cases a day right now but that easily could drop and like New York City.
It may not be a problem in a few weeks but who’s to say there’s not a massive outbreak in South Carolina or Georgia? It certainly is great that we have all the makings of a season ready to go but with public schools in South Florida canceled through August and now many private schools that were scheduled to start in just two weeks.
Pushing back the start of school until September it seems very aspirational to think football can start any sooner. Of course like all the rest of the Canes fans out there I am ready and eager for Miami Hurricanes football to start. This team has so much talent on it that the possibilities this season are amazing.