After listening to Fox Sports’ Tim Brando on Friday morning the guess is there will be college football this year mainly because it’s a sport with a lot of flexibility.
“Right now time is on the side of college football,” Brando told Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft (The Morning Rush) Friday morning on ESPN Arkansas. “The sport has always been too short. I’ve been screaming for expansion of the college football playoff.”
No, that’s not going to happen this year but it has created some fairly good-sized windows to move things around.
“The college football season ends on Thanksgiving,” Brando said. “The first weekend in December is Championship Saturday.”
Conferences and the powers that be have been noticing that, too.
“There’s already reports out there that conferences are looking to the venues of those championship games about moving those games back a week,” Brando said. “Not only could they move them back a week, but two weeks, three weeks.
“That’s not information that’s been reported but I know because I’ve been talking with conference commissioners and athletic directors about the potential of moving everything back a week, two weeks, three weeks is there.”
With all the uncertainty as players are testing positive for the virus all over the country, that time thing jumps back into the mix. College football has options.
“The potential of starting the season then hitting the pause button is there,” Brando said. “You could end the college football regular season at the end of December just as easily as you end it in late November and not affect the postseason whatsoever.
“That wiggle room is the greatest ally college football has right now. That wiggle room is narrowing. With each day we lose one of those days with which to work in terms of trying to get the season in.”
Brando has been impressed with the way conference commissioners and athletics directors have been working together.
“How they’ve stayed in contact with their constituencies almost weekly, maybe two or three times a week, Zoom neetings taking place between AD’s and their conference offices,” he said. “even the sharing of information from one conference to another is taking place.”
But he still thinks someone should be overall of college football. It’s something he’s talked about for a number of years.
“I’m still a proponent of college football needing a czar,” Brando said. “There are a number of examples through all of this where people have spoken out of turn and it sends mixed messages.”
Most of it is to avoid the different messages everybody seems to send in a world where the right hand doesn’t even realize the left hand is on the same body at times.
“It would be wonderful if we had one voice that could work in concert with the commissioners so we could mitigate some of the misinformation that’s out there,” Brando said. “It’s out there consistently with college sports.”
Right now the general feeling is there will be college football this year. For starters, the financial implications are probably too big to fail.
But nobody knows anything for sure right now and everybody’s watching closely.
“These next few weeks are important,” Brando said.
