Blitz Podcast: Could COVID-19 kill the 2020 college football season?

This week’s Saturday Blitz Podcast looks at the potential impacts of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 on the 2020 college football season.

It is hard to find a silver lining in everything. The old dictum asserts that is possible everywhere you look, if you just take the right approach and look with the right perspective. That assertion, however, doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to pull off for the layman in real life.

That is especially true in the midst of the coronavirus, as positive tests for COVID-19 ramp up around the United States and the pandemic sweeps around the globe. Sport is usually the “escape from reality” for people, as Freddie Mercury might say, but there is no escape from reality right now.

Could that be true as we advance into the fall? Could COVID-19 kill the possibility of a 2020 season? And even if football does return in the fall, might a resurgence of the coronavirus around the country force a truncated season?

That is what the Saturday Blitz Podcast discusses this week, as we return from our self-imposed social isolation in Pennsylvania and Alabama respectively to discuss how the coronavirus and how an escalating number of COVID-19 cases might impact the 2020 season.

In the first segment, we discuss the potential shape of the 2020 season in light of discussions about the possibility of moving up the schedule and/or shortening the number of games played per team. After the first break, we return to discuss what the monetary impacts of the coronavirus might be if next season is shortened or abandoned.

In the final segment, the podcast returns to discuss how the international COVID-19 outbreak and the potential for another coronavirus ramp-up in the fall might help the push for a new NCAA Football game release by EA Sports. We discuss the economics of how that might work in terms of paying fair dollars to both schools impacted by lost revenue from canceled games and the players sidelined from the opportunity to play.

Check out the podcast through the player above or download it now at Spreaker.

The Saturday Blitz Podcast is part of the FanSided Radio Network at Spreaker. The show goes live every Wednesday morning. You can reach John Mitchell at @jlmitchell93 and Zach Bigalke at @zbigalke on Twitter.