In recent days, there has been increasing discussion regarding the 2020 college football season amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Will the season be played at all? Will it be shortened? Will it be pushed back, possibly even to the spring?
Liberty athletic director Ian McCaw remains optimistic the season will go on as scheduled.
“Based on the information I’ve had, I’ve been on several AD calls where we’ve had Epidemiologists and medical experts,” McCaw stated on a virtual press conference on Wednesday. “They’ve been very encouraging. There’s a pretty strong belief this is going to peak in the not too distant future and we can resume to much more normal activities over the summer months. There’s a lot of reason for optimism that we will be back to normal for the fall.”
Liberty is scheduled to open the 2020 football season under second year head football coach Hugh Freeze on September 5th in Blacksburg against Virginia Tech. Despite his optimism, Freeze and his staff have been working on contingency plans just in case things don’t go as planned.
“We have discussed some contingency plans,” McCaw stated. “Some people have talked about the possibility of a shortened season in 2020 and we have discussed that, and also the possibility that conferences may just play the conference portion of their schedule.”
With Liberty being an Independent and not a member of a football conference, if the season is shortened to an 8 or 9 game season where all FBS leagues are only playing conference games, hat could be a problem when it comes to scheduling for the Flames.
“In that scenario, we’ve actually had some preliminary discussions about replacement games including adding some of our fellow Independents.”
Liberty is currently scheduled to play fellow Independents UMass and UConn in 2020. Other Independents include Army, New Mexico State, BYU, and Notre Dame.
“I’ve read some comments about possibly, if things are not looking good in the fall, to push the football season to the spring, I think that’s very unlikely.” McCaw continued, “At this point, you want to prepare for everything but hope for the best.”
“We do have contingency plans in place, but I’m very hopeful we’ll be able to play a full 2020 season.”
