Notre Dame Football: California schools could complicate the schedule
Notre Dame football has two schools from the state of California schedule, which could complicate things for the the Irish are forced to replace them this fall.
As of now, things are certainly looking more optimistic for college football returning in the fall. A number of schools announced that they will have student athletes return to June, most notably the SEC’s return on June 8th. This has come on the heels of the NCAA lifting the ban on ‘on-campus training’ starting June 1st.
Still, there are more that a few questions regarding the start of the 2020 college football season, especially regarding schools in states like California. This is important to Notre Dame for a simple reason: they play two teams from California annually.
Will USC and Stanford be able to play their seasons? If not, how does Notre Dame replace to of its annual rivalries, including its biggest rival in USC? It’s a legitimate concern that they will follow suit of the Cal State System, and only have online classes in the fall.
With classes being strictly online, it’s going to be difficult to justify bringing football players to campus to play football. Making football players come back to campus to play would be a concession that they’re more than student athletes: they’re an asset to the university who should receive compensation as such.
So, if USC and Stanford are unable to play, how does Notre Dame compensate on their schedule?
The most likely decision would be to replace USC and Stanford with Independents who were suffering from similar difficulties. BYU, for instance, would need to replace San Diego State and Stanford. The two could try and find a way to slot each other in. This could also work for teams in conferences who need to replace an out of conference game.
Another option would be to fill in their schedule with more ACC teams, and strengthen ties to the conference for the season. This would work best if Notre Dame lost more than just the California teams from their schedule, or teams ended up playing a conference only schedule.
Of course, in the scenario where attendance is limited at stadiums it would make sense to schedule local games. This would cut down on the cost of travel, and help make up money lost in ticket sales. Purdue, for instance, would be a good game to fill in here.
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It’s also possible that given the programs both being private institutions that they bring students to campus. In that scenario, they’ll be able to play. They may not be able to play in front of a crowd, or even when the games were originally scheduled, but they’d still be able to play the games. At the end of the day, simply playing the games is what everyone wants most of all.