Miami Hurricanes’ AD Floats Idea Of February Start To College Football Season
The college football season is in jeopardy, even if some people associated with the sport won’t admit it. The Miami Hurricanes’ athletic department thinks it may have come up with a solution — instead of canceling the season altogether, simply move the start of it back several months. In a new proposal floated by the Florida school, the season would run from February to May, as opposed to September to December.
Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported on the idea from Miami AD Blake James. James wants to start the season on time, if at all possible. There is a growing number of people who don’t think an August or September start date is going to work because the country will probably still be under lockdown.
If the college football season has to be pushed back to the middle of the winter, James says the idea has to be considered even if the season conflicts with other college sports, including the NCAA basketball tournament.
“My hope is we are on the schedule we have scheduled right now. If someone said to me you have to start football season in October, November, December, January, February, whatever it is to get it in next year, that is something we would want to do and want to have in place.”
Jackson points out that schools like Miami rely on the money brought in by the college football season. That money far outweighs what the baseball and even the basketball seasons bring in.
The Miami athletic director wanted to be clear that talk of moving the season back is very premature at this point. With months to go until a decision would have to be made, most people in other athletic departments are still operating under the notion that things will be close enough to normal in the near future. Their hope is that even if a season has to be pushed back, it will be by only a month or two rather than several.
It should be pointed out that starting the year in February would have less of an impact on a school in Miami. Other programs, such as those in the Big 10, would be starting the season off during the coldest period of the year. Such a plan would give warm-weather programs an advantage in attendance, at the very least.
Of course, a scheduling advantage isn’t the real issue. James said 75 to 80 percent of the Miami Hurricanes’ sports budget comes from football. Knowing that, it is difficult to consider the entire season being canceled.
