The 2020 college football season will be one filled with uncertainty. We’ve seen players opt out of playing entirely, not to mention whole leagues shutdown fall sports. We’ve also seen reports that entire position groups have tested positive for COVID-19 and have had to quarantine.
What happens when or if that occurs once the ball is kicked off and the season is underway?
Dan Mullen has been asked by Athletic Director Scott Stricklin just how many guys he would need to play a game if, for one reason or another, the Gators were severely limited in a given week. Mullen doesn’t have an exact number but Friday afternoon the Big 12 put out their exact numbers.
The Big 12 and commissioner Bob Bowlsby will require a minimum of 53 players on the gameday roster (scholarship players and walk-ons included). Teams must also have a minimum of one quarterback, seven offensive linemen, and four interior defensive linemen available to play. There is a get out of jail free card. A team that doesn’t meet these thresholds can choose to play if they feel comfortable doing so but would need approval from the Commissioner. If approval is not given, the game will be ruled a “no contest.”
The proposal has the best interests of the players and teams in mind, but in the ultra-competitive world of college football, any and every advantage will be sought after and taken advantage of if possible.
That’s exactly where Dan Mullen’s mind went when made aware of the Big 12’s thresholds.
“I think everybody’s worried about maybe gamesmanship,” Mullen said Friday night. “So all of a sudden you’re looking at, nothing against the kid who played quarterback for Kentucky last year but they could look, say, ‘you know we had to move a receiver to the quarterback so we should get relief from that,’ you know. You know in injury base you know I mean, so we have some injuries, do we say we get relief from that until we can get healthy. I think there could be some gamesmanship.”
Certainly, just look at Florida’s roster. The Gators have three scholarship quarterbacks on the roster but say the room is hit with the coronavirus and all three tests positive the week before the LSU game. The Gators have Kadarius Toney, who played quarterback in high school and theoretically could play quarterback for Florida in a pinch. He certainly wouldn’t be able to run the offense in the way Kyle Trask or Emory Jones would be able to, but if you absolutely needed to, he could play quarterback. Toney is listed as an athlete but mainly plays receiver. In this totally hypothetical scenario, Mullen could say that his team doesn’t have a quarterback to force a rescheduling or a no-contest.
Mullen offered his solution to a team that tried to game the system in that manner.
“One of the thoughts I had on that is, whatever you pick the numbers to be is great. And then you go and you know I mean we’ve set up the extra bye week and the extra week at the end of the season to make up a game. So what happens is if we have to all of a sudden, look, we get one game that we can try to change the date on, you know what I mean when it becomes a no contest reschedule—the second time you do that you have to you have to forfeit the game,” Mullen offered. “That’ll eliminate any of the gamesmanship because we’ll find a way where if we had to forfeit we’ll find a way to play with zero quarterbacks, and that’ll eliminate maybe the potential of anybody trying to have gamesmanship within the rule or trying to play around the rule to try to, you know, work it to their advantage and which I mean you certainly hope no one would do, but I’m sure there are coaches out there will try to try to do that and work their way around it maybe. And, you know, yeah, that’s not fair and anyway I mean why punish a team doing things the right way, you know, like all of a sudden we’re ready to play. You got a bunch of guys, you’re not doing things the right way and now we got to go play later in the season, now we have a bunch of injuries or we have something like that. Why, why, why punish us? So I think you should get one. And then the second one you’d have to forfeit the game if you don’t want to play. I think that would solve a lot of problems.”
The SEC office has asked all 14 head coaches what numbers they would be comfortable with and the coaches have submitted that information. The league has yet to what its thresholds will be for the 2020 season, but Mullen does bring up solid points and pitfalls of whatever the ruling will be.
The 10-game, all-conference schedule will be grueling physically, not to mention the potential spread of a virus that would put a player in quarantine for nearly two weeks — potentially missing two games. with so much on the line you know coaches will look for any and every advantage they can get in a weird season.