Clemson Football: Paul Finebaum speaks on potential 2020 season cancellation

Clemson football fans are hoping to see their Tigers compete for another CFB Playoff appearance, but the status of the 2020 season isn’t confirmed.

The 2020 Clemson football team is currently considered the odds-on favorite to win the National Championship.

The Tigers will enter the 2020 season returning some of the top names in the country, including Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne, and as a result will be favored in every single game during the regular season.

Should Dabo Swinney‘s club find a way to win-out yet again, they’ll be making a CFB Playoff appearance for the sixth-straight season.

However, all of that currently hinges on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak.

Though conference officials seem optimistic that the 2020 College Football season will be able to be played as normal, SEC Network Analyst Paul Finebaum said that many Athletic Directors are ‘concerned’ moving forward.

Finebaum made an appearance on WJOX 94.5 FM’s “The RoundTable” and shared his thoughts on University of Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin’s recent comments about the potential of a canceled 2020 season.

"“I believe they’re very concerned, Jim, and I think there’s a hope that the season will get underway, I just don’t know in what shape or form,” Finebaum said via The Spun. “And you’ve heard, as we’ve all heard, that the athletic directors, communicate with Commissioner Sankey every day and I think they’re just, I’m sure they’re probably going over a list of possibilities — what if (possibilities). And I thought Scott was about as buttoned-down as anyone we talked to date, because you know he is that type of organizer and facilitator and right now it just kind of like everything else, we don’t know."

Though Athletic Departments pull in several streams of revenue, College Football is the major ‘money-maker’ and the repercussions of losing a season could be absolutely devastating, according to Finebaum.

"“All these athletic departments are prepared for difficulty, but none of them are prepared for a shortening of the football season or a collapse of the football season. And I mean the trickle-down of that would be catastrophic,” Finebaum said."

It’s obviously something no one wants to think about right now. Sports fans have lost their entire outlet over the course of the last couple of weeks and it doesn’t seem as if athletics will be returning soon.

There’s plenty of optimism that everything will be under control by the time football season returns, but there are still plenty of ‘what-ifs’ as we move forward into the rest of the spring and into the summer.