mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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12-31-20 03:47 PM - Post#318369
In response to PennFan10
Well, to be clear, I primarily post here for the benefit of folks that read a lot more than they post to ensure that they have the best info I can provide. I'm not really focused on changing your mind, which seems pretty made up.
In college football, it really was a tale of two seasons. In Sept and Oct, when cases were relatively low nationally and spikes were isolated to particular regions of the country, very few games were cancelled each week. It did look like the worst fears were overblown. This also coincided with the timeframe when it looked like winter and spring sports would happen for the Ivy League. Week 10 (the start of November) is when things turned HARD - it was the first week that double-digit games had to be postponed or cancelled, and there would be double-digit postponements or cancellations every week thereafter.
It's hard to explicitly pinpoint a percentage of games scheduled, because in the later weeks and for bowl games, conferences just stopped rescheduling games that teams didn't want to play and bowls were cancelled that teams didn't want to attend. There were more than 40 bowls scheduled for 2020, and it looks like 26 will end up getting played.
So, yes, if you look at the season as a whole, 1/3rd is high. If you look at the part of the season that occurred while the country was spiking, it's a pretty good estimate.
While there are many non-Power 5 schools playing winter sports, I-AA, II and III cancelled football and the other fall championships. The I-AA teams that did play a minimal number of games did so to get the big $$$ they could to play the non-conf games that still existed against I-A competition. We'll see how things go in winter competition, but it's hardly clear to this point that the lower divisions will be successful in completing a season.
What I can say is this... there were legitimate beliefs, up until the final week or so prior to the decision, that the league would go forward with basically five or six teams and leave Harvard and Yale (and maybe Princeton) in the dust. That would have been a pretty radical move for the league, and I firmly believe that it wasn't just all blowing smoke (it would have been a crazy thing to suggest if it wasn't legitimately being discussed). Folks around the league have a pretty sober view of what the presidents will and won't allow, but there were legitimately differing views on this point. There wouldn't have been if this were something preordained from day one.
So, again, I'd suggest folks save their "anti-president" rants for the unnecessarily dumb, self-defeating stuff they actually do, rather than their decisions surrounding a pandemic.
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