Blitz Podcast: What if college football only had 5 neutral-site games in 2020?

With COVID-19 continuing to impact college football just like every other aspect of our lives, we play out a thought experiment in this week’s podcast.

Even as stay-at-home orders are easing in some states around the country, uncertainty continues to swirl around when life might start approximating something to normalcy for millions of Americans. That is no less true about college football, where there is a lot of conjecture about what might happen once August rolls around but little in the way of definitive answers.

Spoiler alert: We here at the Saturday Blitz Podcast have no good answers, either.

Quite simply, just like everyone else from conference executives and athletic department leadership down to the lowliest fan, none of us have a clue what the world will look like three months from now or what kind of a patchwork football season we might actually experience. Given that we discuss college football and write about the sport, we certainly hope that risk levels dissipate and gridiron action returns on schedule.

If it doesn’t, though, we must be prepared for all contingencies. Given the recent recommendations by the NCAA around name, image, and likeness rights for athletes representing university teams, the podcast takes a moment in the opening segment to discuss what the NCAA got right and where they fell short in their recommendations.

Then we turn the podcast toward a thought experiment in the second and third segments.

Imagine a world where college football cannot return as normal… BUT it is possible to safely bring back 10 teams to play a series of five games at an isolated neutral site for the benefit of our greedy television-watching eyes. Which five games are absolute can’t-miss contests on the 2020 calendar?

That’s the question we tackle in this week’s Saturday Blitz Podcast. Tune in through the player above or download the episode to your favorite listening device!

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.