Coronavirus News
Coronavirus Is Turning College Football Into Football Without College
Mary Sue Coleman loves college football so much that the former president at Iowa and Michigan plans to spend each autumn of her retirement in Ann Arbor, Mich. But as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the U.S., she sees a big problem for the roughly 70 schools still trying to play a 2020 season. It’s increasingly…
Mary Sue Coleman loves college football so much that the former president at Iowa and Michigan plans to spend each autumn of her retirement in Ann Arbor, Mich. But as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the U.S., she sees a big problem for the roughly 70 schools still trying to play a 2020 season.
It’s increasingly unlikely that any university will be able to hold in-person classes, Coleman said. And that conflicts with the NCAA’s longtime view that being a college athlete means being fully integrated into the student body.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, we can use the model of [some pro sports] and put them in a bubble,’” said Coleman, who is also a member of the NCAA’s board of governors. “You can’t put them in a bubble, because they’re students and they have to go to class. I mean, if they’re on campus and they’re not going to class, they’re not learning anything, then it isn’t any longer the academic environment. It flies in the face of what the NCAA means.”
The NCAA seemed unequivocal about this a few months ago. “All of the Division I commissioners and every president that I’ve talked to is in clear agreement: If you don’t have students on campus, you don’t have student-athletes on campus,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said in May.
But college campuses’ rocky reopenings during the pandemic are testing that consensus. Some big schools seem determined to play football even if all other students are sent home.
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