PULLMAN, Wash. — Pac-12 Hotline’s Jon Wilner reported Thursday that the league is aiming towards an October 31 start date for football.
Wilner’s reporting during the pandemic has been pretty spot on, so we’re going to go with the premise that he’s right here.
On Friday the league will meet to discuss football and basketball so we should have more clarity then, but I want to dive into what a season may look like.
HOW WILL THE SCHEDULE LOOK?
If, by some miracle, Pac-12 schools can get their players in the building by Monday, the October 31 date allows for a six-week training camp.
Normally training camps are about a month, but this feels like a necessity in the Pac-12 because some schools allowed their athletes to return home, unlike Big 10 programs. In fact, six weeks feels a bit rushed and honestly not very safe in terms of preparation to me, but hey, I’m not a coach. I will say that I would expect there to be more injuries this season due to rushing guys back to play after some of them have been laying a bit lower.
If that October 31 date stands and the season is eight games like many have predicted, that means the Pac-12 will wrap up their season on December 19 if they have no byes like the Big 10. By the way, lack of bye weeks is another thing that worries me with injuries.
If the league decided to do a championship game, that would be played around December 26. Who knows if they can get in to the college football playoff, but this schedule leads me to believe that would be the goal. They may just scrap the championship game altogether for those purposes.
This is a very ambitious schedule in this age of COVID, although it does seem possible for all games to be played with COVID testing rapidly developing.
HOW WILL THE COUGS FARE THIS SEASON?
I am not saying this to hate on WSU at all, but I can’t imagine this season is going to be all rainbows and sunshine for them. Washington State and Colorado are easily the most disadvantaged teams in the Pac-12 right now as they both have new head coaches who never got to do spring camp.
I’m just going to put it simply: The Cougs are definitely behind the eight ball. Installing everything they need to install in six weeks while simultaneously amping up conditioning will be difficult. I will say that the Run and Shoot offense isn’t super far off from the Air Raid offense, but still it will be different.
Add in the fact that WSU has already had one of their top returning wide receivers transfer, with several other potential key returning contributors in the transfer portal, and yeah, this could be rough.
Before the Pac-12 cancelled the fall season, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel had WSU at 2-8 on the year. That was also before any players transferred. If I were a fan, I’d go into the season with low expectations and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
WILL FANS BE ALLOWED AT GAMES?
Ah, and speaking of fans, what about games this fall? That’s another area where I say keep your expectations low. No fans are allowed at Seahawks football games right now. That may change over the next month and a half, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, especially since experts say COVID could have a resurgence again in the winter. The very premise of that will probably scare the governor’s office away from allowing anyone to attend.
This season may just be a good one to stay at home for anyways. It is going to be extremely cold for every game. If I’m allowed to attend, I will be investing in electric socks, thank you very much.