"In recognition of the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, the Patriot League Council of Presidents announces the following principles, which will guide the development of a Patriot League Fall 2020 Athletics Plan that makes the health and safety of our communities its highest priority," it reads. What does it mean for Georgetown...and other teams?
1. The release notes that "student-athletes will return to campus at the same time as other students." This would preclude August training camp for PL schools. While Georgetown has not yet announced a start date for the fall semester, it would put pressure on the staff to get the team ready to play in any suitable manner with its first scheduled game on September 5, just two weeks after the arrival of freshmen to campus (the usual arrival of freshmen is the third week on August.)
In the past, Georgetown teams have completed four weeks of training before the first game; were it to follow a similar cadence, the Hoyas may not be ready to open the season until as late as September 26 versus Columbia, negating games scheduled at Marist (September 5), home versus Dayton (September 12) and at Harvard (September 19). If the Ivy league adopted a similar "no early arrival" calendar, the non-conference season would be wiped out altogether and would not begin until October 3, at Colgate.
2. The release announced that "non-league competition will not begin prior to Friday, Sept. 4." Not a problem at GU, but two PL schools have major early season openings; namely, Stony Brook at Fordham on August 29, and Lehigh at Villanova on September 3. Both could theoretically move to September 5 but unless Lehigh and Fordham open early in August, neither team will be in optimum physical shape to meet a CAA school.
3. "No Patriot League teams will fly to competitions and, with rare exceptions, regular-season competition will exclude overnight travel.". Let's examine each of these.
The PL is nominally a bus league but a handful of games this year demand air travel, two of which are so-called "guarantee games" where PL schools are (or were) expected to pick up a six figure check to play a Division I-A opponent: A September 4 trip from Colgate to meet Western Michigan, and a first -ever game that Fordham would travel to Hawaii a week later. Fordham has already cancelled alumni travel packages to the game, and a cancellation of that game will hit the Rams in the wallet.
The PL is nominally a bus league but a handful of games this year demand air travel, two of which are so-called "guarantee games" where PL schools are (or were) expected to pick up a six figure check to play a Division I-A opponent: A September 4 trip from Colgate to meet Western Michigan, and a first -ever game that Fordham would travel to Hawaii a week later. Fordham has already cancelled alumni travel packages to the game, and a cancellation of that game will hit the Rams in the wallet.
Overnight travel isn't an issue from Lehigh to Lafayette, but Georgetown's Oct. 3 game at Colgate is a seven hour bud trip. Do you leave at 2:00 am to arrive in time for a 12 noon game? Will Holy Cross do the same to travel to Washington for a 12 noon start on Nov. 14? perhaps there's a waiver for these kind of games, but it adds uncertainty, something that coaches (and their universities) don't need any more of these days.
Speaking of airplanes and overnight travel, Georgetown was scheduled to fly to San Diego on the Nov. 21 season finale, only the second time Georgetown has flown to an opponent in over a decade. If the PL rules are to be followed, it is likely to be dropped as a result. Does Georgetown find a replacement opponent, and whom, and where?
The scheduling temblors have a domino effect. One team starts to cancel games, other teams scramble. FA number of neutral site "classics" in the SWAC have been scuttled, leading Southern University to start its season three weeks late, picking up Division II Florida Memorial University to get up to a nine game schedule. Its crowning game, the annual meeting with Grambling State at the Superdome, is at risk. A press release announced, well, that it's not guaranteed.
"While statements have been made about the future of [the] Bayou Classic and its location of play in 2020 and 2021, those statements were unofficial," it read. "Decisions about the Bayou Classic will not be made until after The Southwestern Athletics Conference Council of Presidents and Chancellors have a late June meeting where matters related to Fall sports will be discussed."
Last season's game between the two schools drew 68,341 and was nationally televised on NBC, two factors that is vital to the the two HBCU programs. No Bayou Classic isn't just a lost weekend, it's a financial knockdown to a pair of schools with a combined endowment of just $17 million, or 1% of the Georgetown endowment.
We're in uncharted waters here, but it's not the first time. The 1918 Georgetown Hoyas played during the "second wave" of the Spanish flu pandemic at the close of World War I. Its season opened Nov. 9 and ended November 28. Just five opponents ended up on the calendar, four of which were military teams. Very little was ever printed in newspapers about the pandemic so as not to encite panic, even the Georgetown recap in the College yearbook cited "the unsettled condition of the country" but mentioned "influenza" only three times in the entire book, one in an obituary of a fallen classmate.
That's all we know...for now. The next five months are subject to change. In fact, you can count on it.
