What’s going to happen with the 2020 college football season?
“(It’s) the definition of a fluid situation,” Stanford head coach David Shaw said during a media call Monday afternoon.
The Pac-12 gathered Shaw, along with Washington State’s Nick Rolovich and USC’s Clay Helton to talk about the current state of the conference. It was the first of four media-only webinars this week that will feature each of the league’s football coaches. Colorado’s Karl Dorrell will appear on Tuesday.
The three coaches who appeared on Monday had varying takes about what will happen with the 2020 season, but they seemed to believe clarity will come in the next 6-8 weeks.
“Many of us believe it’s not going to be 12 (games) and it might not even start on time,” Shaw said.
Rolovich was more optimistic.
“In my mind, I’m planning on playing Utah State game one, so I don’t have a comment really about that other thing you asked about,” Rolovich said. “I’m optimistic about going with the 12 we’ve got until they tell me differently.”
If the relevant entities decide that a 12-game schedule is unrealistic, there are innumerable ways the season could be structured. For example, teams could cancel their non-conference games — typically the first three or four of the season — and only hold the conference games, which begin later in the year.
Another option is to expand the conference season to 11 games, so each Pac-12 team would have a chance to play each other.
“That’s been one of the many structures of our discussion depending on where we are 6-8 weeks from now,” Helton said.
Shaw was concerned that if there were no non-conference games, it would be hard to pick four teams to compete in the College Football Playoff. If each team only plays eight or nine games, there will be significantly more undefeated teams at the end of the season and there would be no way of knowing which conference was playing at the highest level.
“There’s been a lot of discussions, for this year, do we expand the playoff because we aren’t really going to know how to whittle this thing down to four [teams]?” Shaw said.
An expanded College Football Playoff would allow every conference champion a chance to compete for the title and maybe add a few wild card teams as well. Shaw believed the conversation about the postseason structure would begin in 4-6 weeks.
“The structure of the regular season will dictate the postseason,” Helton said.
For Rolovich, the optimist, the goal is to resume college football as soon as it is safe, regardless of whether there may be some restrictions.
“I think it’d save a lot of time on silent count practice,” Rolovich joked. “I think in general if we feel it’s safe enough to play, then I’d like to play. I know the fans is part of the experience, I think it’s also part of the financial model. But that’s not in my job description, so we’re just trying to hopefully get some games this fall.”
