College football starting in October? Delayed till spring? Virus creates major challenges
Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said Tuesday that there will not be athletics in the conference until campuses of member schools are open and fully operational.
“Unless they’re in full mode with dormitories and housing and all the other facilities open, we won’t have college athletics,” Thompson said in a video interview released by the conference.
He also said the conference needs to take an all-or-nothing approach to athletes returning to campus.
“I can’t imagine that we would bring football players back and not allow the other sports to come back,” said Thompson, adding that the conference will lean on advice from medical professionals and the state and federal governments before deciding when athletics will resume.
In the first installment of the interview, which was released Monday, Thompson said despite the cancellation of spring sports in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, programs in the conference will be fine for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends June 30.
But if there’s no football, he said the story changes dramatically.
“If there’s no college football this fall, there’s very little likelihood there will be any other sports because 85% of revenue derived in college athletics comes from the sport of football,” Thompson said.
In 2018-19, Boise State football generated almost half of the $50,599,483 collected by the entire athletic department.
The consensus, Thompson said, is that most college football programs need somewhere between six and eight weeks to prepare for a season, and if the season is going to open as usual on Labor Day weekend, a decision will need to be made in early July.
Complicating the decision to reopen sports in the Mountain West is the fact that the conference is spread across eight states, at least one of which — Wyoming — is not currently under a stay-home order.
“Do we need unanimity? Do we have to wait until all states are open?” Thompson asked. “You can understand the clamor there would be if certain coaches say ‘they can practice in seven of the Mountain West states and we can’t.’ ”
On Monday, Thompson hinted that Mountain West media days may be held in a virtual format in July, but he said the date could get pushed back depending on when, or if, football season begins.
He also said scheduling is going to be a challenge, as Group of Five conferences compete with the obligations CBS and Fox already have to the NFL and Power Five college football games. On Tuesday, Thompson said there have been discussions about pushing the start of the season back to October or playing in the spring, but no decisions have been made.
“There’s a lot of games that might be in a very condensed fall, if we’re playing football in the fall,” he said.
The latest College Football Playoff budget was approved this week, according to Thompson, and it took a 16-20% cut.
He also said the Mountain West is looking at a 15-20% cut in its operating budget, and member schools all probably lost in excess of $1 million when the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments were canceled.
He did say, however, that the Mountain West was fortunate to hold its conference basketball tournaments before the NCAA canceled all remaining winter championships and spring seasons on March 12.
That helped the conference fulfill its obligations to TV partners and, thanks to sponsorship money and ticket revenue, Thompson said distributions to conference programs should be around 97% of what was proposed.
Thompson also suggested ideas to reduce spending without cutting non-revenue sports, including reducing the numbers of games in a season and the number of players on teams and getting creative with scheduling multiple games in a single road trip.
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 4:51 PM.
