LSU, Tulane hope for chance to make more football history

These are historic times for the LSU and Tulane football programs.

The Tigers are just six months removed from winning their fourth national championship. They had the most prolific season in school history and arguably the best season in college football, finishing 15-0 and mostly dominating their opponents.

The Green Wave have won a bowl game each of the last two seasons, which had never been done before in school history.

It’s difficult to think of another time when there has been as much collective anticipation for the LSU and Tulane football seasons as there is this summer.

Let’s hope both seasons happen.

We know that the precautions for the COVID-19 pandemic will prevent this college football season from being a normal one, but hopefully the season take place safely in some modified form.

Hopefully Ed Orgeron’t Tigers can defend their SEC and CFP championships. Hopefully Willie Fritz’s Green Wave can pursue a third consecutive bowl victory.

But there are concerns.

The Ivy League has announced that it is canceling all sports competition until 2021. Now the Ivy League doesn’t compete on the same level as LSU and Tulane and athletics don’t generate a fraction of the revenue that the FBS does for programs such as the Tigers and the Green Wave, so it was easier for them to make that decision.

On Monday, in another decision unaffected by significant streams of revenue, the National Junior College Athletic Association announced that its season is scheduled to begin next March.

The higher levels of college football understandably are going to wait longer than the Ivy League and the junior colleges to make a decision and look at myriad options for salvaging a season in whatever form is most realistic.

But other decisions relevant to LSU and Tulane also are occurring. The Big Ten and the Pac-12 conferences are canceling all non-conference games. It’s hard to imagine the rest of the FCS conferences not eventually following suit.

So no one is going to match LSU’s 15-0 record from last season if everyone plays fewer than 12 regular-season games.

A large majority of non-conference games are played in September, meaning switching to conference-only schedules buys a little time in opening the season and preparing to do so as prudently as possible.

The SEC reportedly is looking at a variety of scenarios, one of which would have the defending the national champions kicking off the season as late as Sept. 26 when their conference opener against Ole Miss is scheduled for Tiger Stadium.

In the meantime college football leaders can observe and learn whatever lessons can be taken from the expected opening and reopening of professional sports leagues.

NBA teams already are practicing in Orlando in preparation for restarting their season July 30 when the New Orleans Pelicans play the Utah Jazz.

Major League Baseball is scheduled to open its truncated season July 23 and the NHL is scheduled to restart its season August 1.

Hopefully all of those seasons will start or restart, continue and be completed as scheduled. Hopefully their ability to work through the inevitable presence of the virus will provide best-practice guidelines for college football and others.

But college football has always had the most daunting challenge of anyone in trying to conduct a 2020 season.

In the FBS alone there are 130 schools, each with its own athletic director and president. There are 10 conferences, each with their own commissioner, as well as six independent schools. There are multiple relevant governing bodies, including the NCAA, the CFP and the bowls.

That’s an awful lot of chefs in a very hot and stressful kitchen right now.

Additionally, several colleges and universities have decided to begin the fall semester by conducting some if not all of its classes online. That’s a very useful tool in this world of social distancing.

Perhaps traditional classroom work can return or be ramped up as the semester goes along. Perhaps not.

But football practice and football games cannot be conducted online. The players, coaches, medical staff, officials and other support staff must be together.

It would be a very difficult sell for any university in the midst of this pandemic to limit or eliminate classroom access for the student body at large while allowing and essentially encouraging student-athletes to be on campus and potentially expose themselves to the virus because the school wants the money.

The players are supposed to be student-athletes – students first and athletes second – and the above scenario would demonstrate that they are in fact the opposite.

Any football-playing university that closes its campus to all students – including the football team – could easily start a trickle-down effect that would make any sort of a season even less viable.

Perhaps these challenges will be met successfully. A lot of smart, well-paid people with a lot at stake are working very hard to figure it out.

This time a year ago, no one would have predicted that Joe Burrow would win the Heisman Trophy by a record margin as LSU rolled to the national championship.

Two years ago no one would have predicted that Tulane was embarking on consecutive seasons that would both end with bowl victories.

So perhaps the 2020 college football season will take place in some form.

As much as anyone else, LSU and Tulane hope so.