Football Schedule Options Narrowing Down
The Pac-12 has said it will unveil its 2020 football schedule by July 30, but sources are putting together a picture of what it might look like.
The league has already eliminated non-conference games and the preferred schedule seems to call for each team to play ten games, a full round-robin in its own division, and five of the six in the other. A nine-game season is also being considered.
“They want to be as flexible as possible, so they aren’t eliminating the nine-game option,” a source told the San Jose Mercury.
The targeted starting date is the weekend of Sept. 19, which for most teams would have been the third week. Cal was scheduled to open Aug. 31 a week earlier than most.
Although beginning on Sept. 16, buys an extra two weeks to evaluate the progress of dealing with the coronavirus, even that date seems overly optimistic to some observers. Fall camps are allowed to begin 29 days before the first game, so that means camps would open Aug. 21, less than a month from now.
The Pac-12 championship game is scheduled for Dec. 4 which would leave just 11 weeks to play ten games. Ideally more than one bye week would be scheduled to allow for some flexibility. And sources say the conference has investigated playing the title game, one or even two weeks later, and it can be done.
Granted that is bumping into the start of the bowl season, but ESPN owns the rights to most of those, and can move the dates. That is made easier by the fact that few fans, if any at all, figure to attend any of them.
The decision rests with the respective university chancellors and presidents, and they will need the approval of local health officials. And that raises another issue. For example, what would the league do if the COVID-19 virus is relatively controlled in Salt Lake City and Corvalis, but is raging in Los Angeles and the Bay Area?
Depending on what comes out of next week’s announcement, the conference can postpone the final decision until the middle of next month.
Of course if it all blows up, there is still the option of playing some sort of season in the spring. Football on May Day? Could happen.
Meanwhile everyone waits. Currently Cal players are lifting weights and doing fitness training outdoors at Memorial Stadium and Maxwell Field in small groups. They are also PRPs (Players Run Practices) at nearby high schools.
The coaching staff, aside from the fitness group, cannot be involved until about a week or ten days prior to the start of camp What is allowed then is block work - film study and walkthroughs of plays and alignments.
