There’s stress, anxiety, fear and outright confusion in college football.

On Sunday night, it seemed like the day of reckoning for the sport’s season in the fall was closer than it ever has been in the last month—the Big 10 presidents were and still are reportedly ready to pull the plug on a fall season. Then reports about the Big 12 and SEC still staying pat for now started to trickle out.

Which takes this whole situation back to mid-May.

Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley stood firm on his ground of listening to science and doctors in order to make sure his players got back to Norman, Oklahoma, safe and aware of what was to come during a zoom conference all.

He called the then-June 1 decision date some schools and people were coming up with as a return date ‘ridiculous’. Riley got positive and negative headlines for it as some rightfully argued that players were safer on campuses than at home and some rightfully argued that patience was the best option.

But it was the last sentence to a question on that conference call that should have raised the alarms then about that day of reckoning that was coming for a fall season. They should have been the loudest comments instead of drowned out by a difference of listening to science or not.

“I definitely think we’ll play (a season),” Riley said. “When we play, I think everybody’s got to have a very open mind about this. We’re not the NFL. There are some very, very huge differences; this is a totally different deal. All this talk about all these schools bringing players back on June 1st is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. But I do believe if we do it right and we don’t get ahead of ourselves, we’ll be able to play a season.”

“In my opinion, we need to bring them in as late as we possibly can before we play a season. Every day that we bring them in is a day we could have gotten better. It’s a day we could’ve learned more about the virus. It’s a day PPE maybe gets better. It’s a day closer to vaccine. It’s a day that our testing equipment and testing capabilities get better, and it’s just not worth it. So we’ve got to be patient. We get one shot at this, and we’ve got to do it right.”

We had one shot at a fall season. That was it, and now it feels closer to a fantasy than it does real.

Riley was right and here we are on Aug. 10, almost a month to the new proposed start date of Sept. 19 for the start of the Big 12 football season. We have schedules or scheduling models for each power-five conference, but we still don’t know if college football is being played. Oklahoma paused preseason practice and are allowing players to go home until a scheduled return on Friday.

Games, though, have been reduced to essentially all conference play. Group-of-five schools are struggling without game contracts from power-five schools to bring the athletic departments money. The entire FCS will soon move to a spring conference schedule and fall championships have been canceled for NCAA DII and DIII.

And now, the players themselves want a say in what’s going. Not just some players from Northwestern or more recently the Pac-12 United player movement, but the sport’s biggest names ranging from sure-fire top-5 NFL Draft pick Trevor Lawrence down to budding star Kedon Slovis from USC and Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler who hasn’t played a game yet, but is already a top-5 Heisman contender according to Vegas.

The waters have gotten very muddy and there are more cooks in the kitchen in college football than ever before.

There’s a reason why we are at this crossroads, there’s a way a middle ground can be met and a way a football season can be played.

The Virus

This isn’t going to be a column that’s going to discuss survival rates, health of young adults or how little of the population in the United States has come down with COVID-19 either with symptoms or without.

None of that matters anymore when it comes to a decision about playing college football or not.

There has always been an overwhelming thought that the long-term effects of this virus could be severe and especially hinder athletes from competing at a high level. New data and research always outdates the old data and research after more is done.

Despite the well-known thought of potential serious long-term effects, it hadn’t crossed the realm of some commissioners in college football. At least not to a serious extent quite yet.

Until now.

“That’s what has been the final straw (for college football),” reports Ross Dellenger of SportsIllustrated, according to a team doctor at a prominent college football program. “The commissioners are finally figuring it all out. The commissioners are going, ‘Oh my gosh!’ And the doctors are like, ‘Yeah…’”

“That’s what people aren’t getting,” Dellenger reports another high-ranking MAC administrator said with knowledge of the presidents’ call Saturday. “It’s pulmonary, cardiac issues.”

Then it begs two huge questions:

Why would universities take on the risk of a player suffered long-term effects from COVID-19 if they get it by someone breaking protocol and starting an outbreak? Especially if it happens due to a university employee? 

Why would college football players not ensure that their potential NFL careers worth millions of dollars in contracts, advertisements and sponsorships are still intact in case they suffer long-term effects of COVID-19?

Let’s take now-sophomore defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux for example.

He put up good enough tape as a freshman at Oregon that some already consider him the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. Thibodeaux comes down with COVID-19 due to a break in protocol and has long-term effects that do not allow him to keep playing football, then what is going to happen?

With the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, Joe Burrow signed a four-year deal worth $36.19 million over four years. That doesn’t include any sponsorships or potential advertisement. A better example would be top 2014 NFL Draft pick Jadeveon Clowney, who hasn’t had the most successful NFL career and has made $50.6 million in seven years of playing, which doesn’t include any sponsorships or potential advertisement.

How much could Thibodeaux come for from Oregon? That’s a question a lawyer could better answer, but he’d be in a great position to get a settlement of sorts from the Ducks.

There’s a ton of risk on both sides, but the ball now is in the player’s court, and it’s obvious schools understand. Whether it was the Pac-12 United movement or what went on with Big 10 players, this went from nothing to something really quick.

Time, amateurism and money—three things college athletics don’t have a lot of right now. Until they possibly could.

NIL and ... Congress?

It’s no secret the ability to profit off your name, image and likeness (NIL) in college sports has been one of the more puzzling things of the social media age.

Kids are getting to campuses now with tens of thousands of followers due to build-up on the recruiting trail on Twitter and Instagram with businesses waiting to get ahold of that viewership and engagement. Ed O’Bannon proved that NIL was profitable after he shut down the entire NCAA Football series made by EA Sports after filing an antitrust class action lawsuit.

Dug deep during the rollercoaster ride the last six months was a major piece of potential NIL legislation for college athletes. One that could change this all right now.

The power-five conference commissioners, not the NCAA, are pushing the United States Congress to help with potential NIL legislation. That help isn’t too far away and in a date reasonably soon enough to save a 2020-21 college football season.

“NIL rules are expected to be written by Oct. 31, with a vote occurring no later than Jan. 31, 2021,” reported CBS Sports writer Ben Kercheval. “If the power conferences truly have as much pull as they like to think, those rules — despite a bevy of other national issues on Washington’s plate during an election year — will come to fruition in their scheduled timeline, if not sooner.”

If the NIL legislation comes that quick, schools like Oklahoma are already ready for what that might entail. The Sooners have been creating logos for their players on signing day the last two recruiting classes. Like this at the end of the video:

“We’ve also worked hard to educate our guys about (NIL),” Riley said in a zoom conference call this summer. “And then the thing for us has been, how do we educate them about their brand so they can maximize that, they can understand what it means, the ways they need to represent themselves, how important that is — but also do it within the team concept.

“You know, the individual stuff is great, but we’ve tried to educate our guys about, ‘If your brand is about the things you do well, (it’s) also about how well you work with others and what a team-first guy you are. What company, what entity anywhere in the world wouldn’t be attracted to that? And it fits what we want here, too. We want guys to have individual goals, but the team comes first.

“You’ve got to be careful. I think there’s some give and take there. And I think you can accomplish both the right way. So that’s been our goal. We want to enhance it as much as we possibly can, and educate. But if it comes from a team-first place, then I think everybody gets what they want.”

So legislation is coming soon and football programs are already preparing for the tidal wave of NIL potential for its players. Now, you add in players ready to unionize like professional sports and there is a light at the end of the tunnel to how this can be resolved and keep both sides happy.

One of the biggest spoofs of this entire deal is the inability to take liability off of the university. I don’t want to think that money is the only reason behind this all-of-a-sudden doomsday that is college football and it’s different to see them weigh money almost the same as personal health.

This is why we’ve seen the ugly side of college football that it is a major business. Administrators and leadership are trying to squeeze every penny out of a potential season and now more danger to the dangerously red budget has arisen.

NIL legislation provides a way for players to become more like professional athletes, which gives them the opportunity to make money in college in a way both agree upon, which could also lead to a mandatory waiver of waiving liability like professional sports entities have.

But this legislation may not be ready until late Jan. of 2021.

Which isn’t any problem.

A Spring Season and NFL

Riley was right about only having one shot at a fall football season.

And he may be right about something else.

There was not a more outspoken person than Riley when it came to a potential football season in the spring.

“I think the people who say it’s not, in my opinion, just don’t want to think about it,” Riley said on another zoom call. “I just think it would be wrong of us to take any potential option off the table right now. I think it’d be very difficult to say the spring is not a potential option. I, for one, think it’s very doable.”

We found it later that he clearly thinks it’s very doable.

Bruce Feldman of the Athletic reported that Riley brought the idea of a spring season to the table during a Big 12 coaches call in April. He researched the weather issues, on playing two seasons in one year and that worrying about NFL Draft players opting-out being the wrong thing to think about because there isn’t that many with proven NFL Draft stock.

“He made a pretty convincing argument,” Feldman reported that another Big 12 coach said this about Riley’s argument (must have a subscription to The Athletic to read). “I hadn’t really thought about it at the time, but I think it is very doable.”

During the conference call when he was asked about a spring season, he also delivered on how this could get done.

“It’d probably be a conference season and postseason only,” Riley said. “We’ve seen often teams go in and play well into January in the College Football Playoff and start spring practice at some point in February, and nobody says a word about that. You’d have to give players plenty of time off to get their bodies back in the summer. Maybe a little later start back the next fall.”

This, too, means that it is time for the NFL to recognize and work directly with its minor league. The 2021 NFL Draft is scheduled to be from April 29-May 1, which would be during a hypothetical spring season.

The NBA worked directly with college basketball to postpone its draft to a later date in order to accommodate their own season and the prospects. Riley agrees that the NFL would have to do something similar.

“I think potentially something that might have to happen,” he said. “You are talking about two big entities there with college football and the NFL. They care about the game and the good of the game and having the game. I can’t imagine both sides wouldn’t be able to get together and work something out so that both leagues would be able to have their seasons. I’m not saying it’s easy, but people have to adjust and have flexible during this time. It’s not easy, but very doable.”

It is doable, especially when you consider teams have two months turn around from bowl season to spring practice. It would just be early May for 116 teams of college football and then late May for the final eight teams left in the College Football Playoff (more on that here in a second).

A 10-game regular season can start on Feb. 20 and end by Memorial Day even with an expanded College Football Playoff to eight teams. I’ve only obnoxiously plugged it since the talk of a spring season ramped up.

Players who suffer serious long-term injuries could lose two seasons instead of just one like normal, but money is going to drive these decision and if money says in the spring, it’s happening in the spring.

It is amazing that we are here.

It’s Aug. 10 and we don’t have a clue what’s happening with college football.

But there is a pathway to resolving the issue. It’s going to take going against the grain, getting used to student-athletes being employees and an adjustment to college football for one single year.

Riley was right—we did only have one shot at this, but the alternative to not playing is playing. There is a way to get this thing done.

The clock is ticking and ticking fast.