There are three big-picture questions surrounding the 2020 college football season: Will it happen at all? If it happens, will games be canceled or postponed? And will fans be in attendance?
"Spoke with an AD today who is going to have his staff start modeling out what it means to the dept to have: 10-game football season, Losing 1 home game, Losing 2 home games, No fans all season, No fans through Oct. Along with other less optimistic scenarios," Ralph Russo tweeted last week.
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Let's take a half-optimistic approach: College football will be played in 2020…but with two canceled non-conference games per team. Which games?
A few notes:
All games must match up. It'd be easy to wipe out all of UConn's games and dish out 11 FBS cancellations but that's not the exercise.
There are no requirements for home, away, or neutral-site games. Some teams lose two home games (e.g. Michigan), while others lose one home game and one away game (e.g. Oklahoma), two away games (e.g. BYU), or one neutral-site and one home/away (e.g. Alabama).
You can't eliminate the first two games for each of the 130 FBS teams; byes and unbalanced conference and non-conference schedules wouldn't result in two canceled games per team. Instead, in picking any two games (with a preference for early-season and FCS games), I'm relying on teams and conferences to untangle my leftover scheduling mess.
MORE: Visualizing a Power Five Split
The worst part: Losing attractive games. For example, in addition to their mid-November cancellation against UT Martin, Alabama is forced to cancel their Week 1 game vs. USC in Arlington. Why not cancel the Tide's Week 2 game vs. Georgia State instead? Because USC won't cancel their regular-season finale vs. Notre Dame, leaving Alabama and New Mexico as their only non-conference options.
Notable losses:
- Alabama vs. USC
- Navy vs. Notre Dame
- TCU at Cal
- Colorado at Texas A&M
- North Dakota State at Oregon
- Florida State vs. West Virginia
- Georgia Tech vs. UCF
- Miami (FL) at Michigan State
- James Madison at North Carolina
- Oklahoma at Army
- BYU at Stanford
- UCLA at San Diego State
- App State at Wisconsin
Here's the full list of proposed cancellations for the 2020 college football season:
