Preparing for (and Embracing) a MAC Football Season Without Fans or Non Conference Games
There will probably be a 2020–2021 college football season. Exactly when and who will be there when it happens remains an open question.
It’s becoming increasingly likely that college football has a season in 2020. However it’s equally unlikely there will be any fans in attendance when the season does begin. It’s also unclear whether the season goes on as scheduled or if another option is available, like playing a conference-only season. The impacts to the MAC if both fans and non conference games are postponed could be tremendous.
On fans attending games in the fall, the MAC has a complicated situation like anyone else. The conference spans five states, each with their own timelines for returning to “normal.” Most notable among them is Michigan, which has the fourth-most COVID-19 deaths in the United States. On May 15th, during her weekly COVID-19 news conference, governor Gretchen Whitmer stated that “sports is not over,” but added that until there’s a vaccine, there will be no capacity sporting events this fall.
Governor Mike Dewine of Ohio, where a majority of MAC members reside, told the Toledo Blade that college football can “figure out how to do a season,” but was noncommittal on whether fans would be in attendance. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker has taken a similar tone, believing sports are possible this summer and fall without fans in attendance. and New York governor Andrew Cuomo seems to be on board with playing sports soon. Indiana is more bullish on people being able to attend events.
Safe to say the MAC plays in empty stadiums, at least to begin with.
The folks in charge of college football seem confident enough in their ability to play a season in the midst of a pandemic that is, at the time of this writing, claiming over one thousand lives daily in the United States. Doing so will require some robust safety protocols and adequate capacity for testing athletes and coaches regularly for Covid-19. Let’s hope the folks in charge are right — the alternate world in which the football rollout is totally mishandled is far too grim.
Just when the season actually starts is anyone’s guess. We likely won’t know more until June, but the PAC-12’s situation could hold the key. California has postponed all in-person instruction for its university system until 2021. Los Angeles County has extended stay at home orders until August, directly impacting USC and UCLA. Commissioners have suggested the possibility of limiting the schedule to conference only, limiting Covid-19 related travel concerns brought on by the non conference schedule.
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In a world currently dominated by fears of the deadly virus, the college football season could be forced into an October start to allow universities enough time to effectively prepare for the season. This would also alleviate any competitive disadvantages caused by schools playing empty home games in states with extended stay-at-home orders while others have semi-capacity crowds. The primary concern is how to decide who goes to the College Football Playoff if a conference-only season occurs, but the MAC is unburdened by such concerns due to being one of the worst conferences in FBS in terms of football quality at the moment.
A MAC-Only Season Could be Fun, Despite the Financial Woes
The scenario in which fans are prohibited from stadiums in addition to a conference-only schedule is likely the MAC’s second-worst outcome behind just cancelling the season outright. The conference enjoys a television deal with ESPN, but the member institutions rely heavily on the guaranteed money that comes from playing schools in the power five conferences.
Kent State, for example, raked in $4.5 million in guarantees for playing Arizona State, Auburn and Wisconsin a season ago, which accounts for 10–15% of its overall athletics budget. In the 2017–2018 season, five MAC schools ran deficits and the remaining conference members did not generate more revenue from operations than were allocated in subsidies or student fees. Losing the guarantee games will exacerbate the problem significantly.
Throwing in lost ticket revenue on top of it all is just an extra burden for the MAC to take on (Western Michigan is especially hurt here as it has a power five home game against Syracuse on the schedule in addition to playing at Notre Dame). When all options are considered, this is a dark background upon which to stage a MAC football season, but the MAC could potentially do some things to make the season more fun despite it all.
The running joke with the MAC is that it shouldn’t be too dismayed by playing in empty stadiums, since it does it every November anyway. There’s something to this in 2020, as the thing we all poke fun at the conference for has just become its super power — if any conference is prepared to stage a television event without a ton of spectators, it’s the MAC. The suggestion: The lean into the chaos and convert every 2020 conference game into MACtion.
This blog will rarely, if ever, extol the virtues of MACtion, whose television success is questionable relative to the attendance tradeoffs and has made it nearly impossible for member football programs to build the local fan base and keep it interested, but 2020 could be its time to shine. If there are not going to be fans in attendance anyway, what is the downside to moving all games to Tuesday and Wednesday nights?
ESPN would have the final say in this, of course, but giving America football every day of the week in the fall after America was fearful most of the spring and summer that the season wouldn’t even happen at all could really put to the test the MAC’s ability to get eyeballs to ESPN when not up against other football games.
The 2020 college football season is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and the MAC could be a big part of making it memorable despite all the ugliness surrounding the conditions under which the season is played.
