Penn State’s James Franklin Says Conferences Should Start Play Even If Some Schools Can’t Open

Consider the following . . .

• The Big Ten hasn’t been the Big Ten in three decades. It features 14 members now, but without a hitch, it could spend this football season with 12, 11 or even (ahem) 10 teams.
• If the Charlotte Hornets opted not to dribble in the NBA until 2021, hardly anybody would notice.
• Few sports franchises are as popular as the New York Yankees with 27 world championships. Still, they wouldn’t shock the planet by passing on a chance for half of a World Series ring this season.

As for that half of a World Series ring for the Yankees, you can excuse them or anybody else in professional and collegiate athletics the rest of 2020 if they lack the desire to do whatever it takes to win it all.

Those references to the Big Ten and to the Hornets are about how the size of conferences and leagues doesn’t matter these days. That applies to the historically mighty or meek, and it all ties into this: Courtesy of COVID-19, an asterisk larger than the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stacked over Michigan Stadium will follow everything.

The record setters.

The attendance marks (high, low and lower than low).

The conference, division and league champions.

Here’s a place for one of those asterisks: COVID-19 won’t function as an equal opportunity virus among sports teams. So conferences and leagues should proceed as normally as health experts say they can.

Some games are better than no games.

Which brings us to what James Franklin, the Penn State football coach who said something this week that likely sits near the opening pages of the COVID-19 contingency plans for decision makers throughout sports, ranging from the NFL to Major League Soccer to the Big Ten, where Franklin’s school resides.

“In a perfect world, everybody opens at the same time. I just don’t see any way that [will] be possible,” Franklin told ESPN Wednesday, referring to life during and after coronavirus regarding teams and their situation or viewpoint on the matter. “Are you going to not have college football this year or sports in general because two states in the country won’t open? I don’t see that happening.”

Neither should anybody.

There’s too much money for sports leagues to lose.

In the case of the NCAA, that’s too much more money to lose since the Washington Post reported the $600 million NCAA payout to conferences and schools scheduled for this year will drop to $225 million. It resulted from the pandemic forcing the cancellation of March Madness, which the Post reported gives the NCAA more than 70% of its $1.1 billion in annual revenue. Most of the money goes to conferences and colleges around the country.

At least those conferences and colleges got something despite the loss of the 2020 Final Four and other tournament games. Not only that, but if medical experts agree, they should get whatever they can this year.

“I can’t imagine that right now we’re all going to open at the same time,” Franklin continued to tell ESPN. “If the SEC, for example, opens up a month earlier than the Big Ten, and the Big Ten is able to open up and 12 of the 14 schools, if two schools can’t open, I don’t see a conference — any conference — penalizing 80% or 75% of the schools because 25% of them can’t open.

“To me, unless there’s a level playing field and the NCAA comes out and says that no one’s opening before this date to try to help with that, what you really end up doing is you end up hurting the conference.

“Say two or three of the schools in our conference that are ranked in the top 10 have the ability to open and a couple schools don’t, and you make the decision to hold the entire conference back, you’re hurting the conference as a whole in terms of your ability to compete.”

Just so you know, college football isn’t the only sport with teams owning conflicting views on when to return from the pandemic.

Take the NBA, for instance.

League officials said franchises can open their practice facilities Friday to allow players to begin training under strict conditions, and Texas governor Greg Abbott gave his OK for sports teams in his state to do so. But Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told the The Athletic’s “77 Minutes in Heaven” podcast he won’t do it, because “We can’t assure anybody’s safety.”

The Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks are among those joining the Mavericks in proceeding with caution despite approval from the governor of their states to practice with restrictions.

Whatever the case, NBA officials should continue their pursuit of finishing the 2019-20 season or starting the next one under the rules of medical and government leaders. The league won’t make anywhere near its record $8.8 billion of last season, but you know what?

It’s better than nothing. Literally.