Sports Illustrated - Concerns Growing About 2020 Season

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However, over the last week I've had a number of conversations with faculty, coaches and athletic department officials that seriously have me questioning whether there will be football in the fall, or at the very least, anywhere close to what we've come to know football to be. 

One coach I spoke to noted that in discussing the upcoming season with a former colleague in the SEC he was surprised to hear that a straw poll among the staff of that southern school had overwhelming expressed concern about moving forward with workouts and (soon-to-be) team practices. 

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There are very real discussions about playing a regional schedule if you can get away with it. One Big Ten school in the West Division supposedly has a tentative regional schedule in place, including, according to a source at that school, "multiple games against FCS schools."
 
Other Big Ten schools are thinking about scrapping the year altogether. 

A number of sources contend there will be a few Big Ten schools that do not play football this fall. While there has been nothing officially released - in some part not to cause panic - Michigan (and other programs) are working behind the scenes to schedule Mid-American Conference and Conference USA opponents.

"It's going to be the wild, wild west pretty soon," one prominent coach said. "At some point, more schools will start announcing they will not play this season and we could be left with eight games on our schedule while Ohio State has 11 and Indiana has 10. The schools that decide to play football will be scrambling to fill games and you could see home-and-homes with conference opponents."

So why haven't schools announced yet? In the opinion of numerous sources it's two-fold: 1) it's July and they're waiting until the last-possible moment to make that call 2) no one wants to be first and incur the PR and recruiting hits.

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