Early 2020 college football storylines on and off the field: Blitz Podcast

After some time away, our Blitz podcast crew returns to discuss the early 2020 college football storylines on and off the gridiron.

The 2020 college football season is officially underway. It’s been an expected abnormal beginning, a trend that will continue throughout the season.

We haven’t seen our normal marquee non-conference matchups in the early weeks, and we are still awaiting kickoff in major conferences such as the SEC and Big Ten — and, of course, confirmation on whether the Pac-12 will follow suit with the Big Ten and play a 2020 fall season after all as the lone Power Five holdout remaining.

But that hasn’t prevented us from seeing some interesting storylines on the field so far, perhaps most notably the Sun Belt flexing its muscles in week two and churning up a 3-0 record against the Big 12. Coastal Carolina beating Kansas again could hardly be called an upset, but Arkansas State stunning Kansas State and Louisiana steamrolling Iowa State would certainly classify.

The Sun Belt has long been considered an also-ran conference in the group-of-five, but the addition of Appalachian State and the rise of Louisiana under head coach Billy Napier has changed the perception of the league in recent seasons, and its profile has likely never been higher, despite Appalachian State’s recent surprising defeat at the hands of the C-USA’s Marshall.

Of course there’s been plenty of storylines off the field to follow as well, most notably the Big Ten’s decision to alter course and commit to a fall season after initially announcing a postponement to the spring of 2021. The logistics of a spring season seemed difficult to pull off, and the reality of missing out entirely on football revenue for this academic year was likely too big of a price to pay.

How do our two hosts feel about the morality of playing college football in the midst of a global pandemic? Both seem to have reservations about even watching the sport for the first time, which made them curious: has your viewership been impacted by COVID-19’s continued threat to the country?

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