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A number of college football coaches around the country have voiced their opinions about the idea of playing games without fans in attendance and now Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin has thrown his hat into the ring.
Kiffin doesn’t even think that it’s a conversation worth having.
North Carolina’s Mack Brown recently came out and said that college football simply ‘can’t happen without fans‘ due to the financial implications it has on entire athletic departments. Brown also said that if it’s isn’t safe for fans to come watch a football game, then it surely can’t be safe for players to actually play a game.
It turns out Kiffin shares the same sentiment as Brown does.
“If it’s not safe for people to be around people, you’re not going to play football,” Kiffin told Knoxville’s WNML-FM. “You can’t have 120 kids on one sideline around each other. Probably 250 people when it comes to all the staff and student managers. It’s not going to happen. You can’t have that many people around each other.”
“(Players are) going to go separate places and see people throughout, at night or on weekends or whatever. I know people talk about that, but I think that’s a waste of time. I don’t know how that would ever happen.”
Given the fact that it’s still a complete tossup at the moment as to when students will actually return to campus in the summer/fall, when the college football season will start is simply a gigantic question mark.
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Chris Fowler said that there was a scenario ‘gaining momentum’ that the season may not happen until Spring 2021.
“There is a third scenario that’s gaining momentum, which may sound preposterous on the surface but I think a lot of reasonable people feel like it might be the most prudent course of action, and that is football in the spring,” Fowler added. “Beginning some point in February, getting into March, April, May, maybe have the postseason in June.”
If you’re a college football fan and either one of these scenarios does actually play out, prepare yourself for a rather uneventful fall.