College Football: Three basic questions that must be answered immediately

Clemson will likely to be forced to play an ACC only college football schedule in 2020.

Yesterday, The Athletic broke the news that the Big Ten was only going to allow college football games to be played among conference opponents. The publication then went on to say that other conferences were set to join them in the near future.

If this is true, there are three basic questions that come out of this that need to be answered. These are questions that have real value but are very simplistic in nature. These questions are more than likely going to cause a reaction that Power 5 Presidents are not ready for and have not thought much about.

Regardless of where you fall on the COVID-19 spectrum, most agree that a conference only schedule makes little to no sense. Why it is Clemson could fly to Boston but South Carolina could not drive to Clemson or why could Rutgers fly to Nebraska but Ohio State can’t fly to Oregon?

Travel is travel regardless of who it is and where they are going. Safety is about protocols and Power 5 Presidents would have been better served to agree on a set of protocols than to simply cancel nonconference games.

That said here are three basic questions that have to be answered for 2020.

1. What about rivalry games?

As we mentioned above, not playing intrastate rivalry games seems really foolish. South Carolina traveling to Texas A&M by plane but not being allowed to travel to Clemson is ridiculous. Florida traveling to Tennessee but not being able to play FSU is absurd. Louisville traveling to Miami but not playing Kentucky is nonsensical.

The follow-up question then becomes if you allow intrastate rivalries, then why cut off games with the Group of Five or FCS teams? The athletic department from these games is going to be decimated. The MAC alone is going to lose more than $10 million because of canceled Power 5 games in 2020.

2. What happens to the Independents?

This obviously includes Notre Dame. If at any point the ACC had any bargaining power to force Notre Dame to join fulltime in football, it is now and that is exactly what John Swofford should do. However, we all know what a coward he is and he will simply allow Notre Dame to play an ACC schedule in 2020 without any further restructuring of their current deal.

If Swofford actually cared about the ACC, he forces Notre Dame’s hand and at least goes out with a bang. There are six other FBS Independents – Army, BYU, Liberty, New Mexico State, UConn, and UMass. Those six schools are scheduled to play 18 games with Power 5 opponents in 2020; eight of them are BYU.

3. Will we see the College Football Playoff in 2020?

If teams are not going to play nonconference games in 2020, will that mean a temporary hiatus for the College Football Playoff? Will each conference crown their own national champion and “claim” a title like UCF did a couple of years ago?

Again, if you can send teams to play each other in a College Football Playoff, what was the point in segregating each conference, to begin with?

This just feels like a conference decision that was thrown together last minute with no real thought, like a shepherd’s pie for dinner. The consequences are going to linger for a very long time and it does not seem like all the very powerful and intelligent people in control have thought about what this means in the future.

As Clemson fans, if we had to choose between playing only ACC teams in 2020 and never seeing guys like Travis Etienne or Trevor Lawrence in a Tiger uniform every again, we will gladly take the ACC schedule in 2020, but other questions clearly have to be answered before September arrives.