The 2020 college football season will be unlike anything we have ever seen. The Big Ten and Pac-12 might not play this fall, and if they do, they might not be able to participate in the College Football Playoff.
If that is the case, will the playoff have appropriate representation? Will it have a proper champion? Do we think that is possible?
“Yes, I do,” College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said on The DA Show. “We are obviously in a situation where we have six conferences that are playing and four are not, and everything about 2020 will be different, including that fact. But at the end of the day, if the virus lets us have a regular season and lets us have a postseason, then we will have a champion.”
Each conference has a plan for completing its season. Whether COVID-19 allows that, however, remains to be seen.
“We just don’t know,” Hancock said. “You’ve seen different conferences doing sort of different planning. The Big 12, for example, has open dates when they can reschedule. The SEC decided to wait until Sept. 26 to start. We just don’t know. Obviously what’s happened so far as we’ve taken baby steps into football – including last night – so far, so good. But I think we’re all just kind of walking along together, kind of holding hands and waiting to see how far we can walk and hoping we can walk to the end of the park and have a championship.”
The College Football Playoff semifinals – the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl – are scheduled for Jan. 1, 2021. The national championship is slated for Jan. 11 in Miami.
Hancock was asked if the playoff has the ability to reschedule those games if needed.
“We haven’t talked about that in detail,” Hancock said. “I suspect we would within some parameters. We have to be cognizant of the NFL schedule. We have to be cognizant of the start of the second semester. We have to certainly be cognizant of all the details that would be involved in having to move games, so we’re not thinking about that. Could we if push came to shove? I suppose we could, but that’s a long way down the road.”
As of now, the plan is to proceed as scheduled and hope for the best.
“We are certainly planning to play our games,” Hancock said. “Just walking through the details of how to play games given the circumstances, we are now entering a period where we’re going to learn a lot from watching the NFL, from watching the colleges, of course. We’re still four months away from games, so we have a lot of time to sit back, take notes and plan and learn.”