Alternatives aplenty exist for UK’s 2020 football schedule. Which do you like most?
If college football is to be played in 2020, it almost certainly won’t look like any season most of us have seen because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Any form of college football played this year is likely to begin with the erasure of non-conference opponents who don’t reside in one of the Power Five leagues from the schedules of schools in those conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference, of which Kentucky is a member. The Big Ten and Pac-12 this month announced that, if a season is played, their full schedules will consist only of intraconference games, kicking even highly anticipated matchups between resource-rich programs — Washington lost a home game against Michigan — to the curb in the name of caution.
The other three Power Five leagues have yet to reveal any intentions beyond a desire to play some form of football this season, but the idea that any small schools remain on their slates in 2020 seems farfetched. Auburn and Mississippi State, as a result of the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s decision to move fall sports to the spring semester, each already lost one of their four non-conference games (Alcorn State was Auburn’s season-opener while Alabama A&M was set to visit Starkville in November). The Colonial Athletic Association, Ivy League, Patriot League and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conferences have all postponed or canceled their fall sports seasons. It won’t shock anyone if similar decisions come soon from other Football Championship Subdivision conferences; the Ohio Valley Conference, from whom UK opponent Eastern Illinois hails, is set to meet this week and next to discuss its fall sports plans.
No Football Bowl Subdivision leagues have outright postponed or canceled fall sports, but if all non-Power Five non-conference schools ultimately are eliminated from Power Five football schedules, choosing to even field sports teams in the 2020-21 school year would become a much more costly endeavor for Group of Six schools like Eastern Michigan and Kent State, the two Mid-American Conference teams on UK’s schedule this season, and who typically rely heavily on student fees and institutional funds to prop up their athletics programs. In fiscal year 2019, games contracted against high-level FBS foes accounted for about 15 percent of Kent State’s total athletics department revenue, according to a USA Today report, and it is set to rake in about $5 million from “guarantee” games at UK, Alabama and Penn state this season. Any games lost to COVID-19 in 2020 could prove incredibly consequential for programs like it.
But, that reality is possible. If the SEC doesn’t opt to go the conference-only route, the only non-conference games likely to be preserved are those against ACC or Big 12 competition (of which there are several). In UK’s case, that would mean retaining its annual rivalry with Louisville, to whom it’s scheduled to travel in November.
A litany of other options could materialize, though. Let’s play the hypothetical game.
Super conference
This might be the biggest long shot on the board, but maybe the most exciting, and at least worth mentioning given the solidarity they’ve shown in decision-making so far. Let’s say the ACC, Big 12 and SEC combine forces this season to play 8-12-game schedules consisting of games against one another, scrapping the entirety of their existing schedules, but keeping geography in mind to attempt to keep travel at a minimum. For a school like Kentucky, that’d mean a drastic adjustment: Of its currently scheduled opponents, it likely would only retain three (Louisville, Tennessee and Vanderbilt) while picking up games against the likes of West Virginia, Virginia Tech and Notre Dame (whom the ACC has said will be included as part of its conference-only plans, should it go that route). The 2020 season is going to be weird regardless of how it’s played, so why not go crazy?
Conference-only
The SEC could opt for a conference-only schedule that also calls for the addition of 1-4 other league games, depending on the number of games it will attempt to play. Those teams could be unique opponents (example: UK picks up a home game against Mississippi and travels to Alabama, on top of its eight other previously scheduled SEC games) or the league could choose to have put into place some home-and-home series if it wants to add games but keep teams geographically restricted as possible (in that case, extra games against Missouri, Tennessee and/or Vanderbilt would seem most likely for UK).
Conference-only, plus one
This is the same as the conference-only scenario except it carves out an exemption for one non-conference opponent from the ACC or Big 12. Based on multiple reports, this appears to be the favored option as of Wednesday.
Divisional only
In the event the league calls for a reduction in the number of games, teams’ schedules could be reduced to six games against only divisional opponents. For UK, that means its schedule would consist only of Florida, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt (dropping Auburn and Mississippi State).
Pods
It’s possible that the league might choose to group teams into geographic “pods” and have those teams play home-and-home series against one another to reach 8-10 games but keep travel at something of a minimum. One such grouping could look like:
▪ Pod A: Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Texas A&M,
▪ Pod B: Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
▪ Pod C: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Auburn
The uneven amount of teams would make scheduling difficult, so unless the league added an independent 15th team for the sake of that — Liberty makes the most geographic sense but is one of the worst teams at the FBS level — this would be difficult to get off the ground. (One solution could be making a team or teams like Alabama, that are within the reasonable geographic footprint of every pod, something of a floater.)
What say you?
A whole host of options — including ones not mentioned above — could be on the table as far as the 2020 college football season is concerned. Does one of the alternatives to the current schedule strike you as more appealing than the others? Let us know! Please vote in the poll below and feel free to provide commentary by emailing me at jmoore@herald-leader or sharing your feelings with me on Twitter (@JoshMooreHL). I look forward to hearing from you!
