Football uncertainty has Lyke and Pitt watching and waiting
As uncertainty surrounding sports continues to grow daily, the fate of football in the fall looms as an ultimate specter.
Whether it’s college or pro, the potential for an altered season - or no season at all - exists as a potential outcome from the COVID-19 pandemic. Spring football has already been canceled. Spring recruiting is on hold until May 31 (at the earliest). And reality has set in that the fall season could be in jeopardy.
Pitt Director of Athletics Heather Lyke isn’t making any guarantees or educated guesses about what might happen five months from now.
“I don’t know if I have a personal level of confidence,” Lyke said in a Zoom teleconference with reporters on Thursday. “I’m hopeful and I pray that the medical healthcare concerns that are so real and so rapidly happening - as many people know, I think we’re at the very beginning stages of this crisis. As you see every day, the numbers on the news really exponentially growing.
“So I’m not sure that we have things self-contained yet. I think we’re doing a better job of that, but I think we’re at the beginning stages of it. So it’s just so hard to predict.”
In lieu of predictions, there has been speculation. The world of college football has seen suggestions ranging from a shortened schedule to a conference-only schedule to a full schedule played with no fans if social distancing restrictions remain in place.
For Lyke, that last option - games with no fans - is a nonstarter.
“If we’re playing the game, I think we’ll be playing it in front of fans, because if there’s a concern about human contact, we wouldn’t be playing the game,” she said. “The social distancing - if those orders are still in place in the fall, we won’t be having games as we know them now. So I don’t anticipate playing games without fans.
“If we’re able to be around one another, hopefully we’re able to go back to what we would consider a normal football season.”
Still, the possibility of a “normal football season” is hanging very much in the balance, and Lyke said that she thinks quite a bit is on the table in the way of options.
“I think you have to be willing to consider all things right now. You know, just conference games is a possibility if it would get to that point. But I really think it is so hard to predict, it’s so hard to tell, at this point in time…I would be remiss, I think, by projecting what was going to happen in the fall and exactly how many games we feel would be a worthwhile football season.
“But I do feel that fans are a part of the experience, so I can’t tell you how much - you know, when you think about coaches and student-athletes playing a game with no one there, there’s something definitely missing. We value that atmosphere and the memories that we’re able to create and the experiences that we’re able to create for everyone that comes to the game. That’s a big piece of it.”
The fate of the 2020 football season will be determined in the coming weeks and months, but in the nearer term, spring football has already been canceled across the country, causing some to wonder if an emergency summer session of spring camp, either as a mid-June event or a July extension of August camp, could come into action.
For her part, Lyke doesn’t see it happening.
“That’s definitely been a conversation. Coach and I have talked about it, as well as my colleagues in the country. I think the reality is, it’s pretty difficult to predict and I would anticipate that there’s probably not a lot of potential to recapture spring practices in any sort of formalized way, in the way that we would think about it.
“The NCAA came out last night that the recruiting dead period is extended through May, so it’s tricky to really predict when we’ll be able to get back live and back to the way we normally work. So I don’t expect it and we’ve sort of mentally prepared that way just in case we don’t get to make up the spring practices.”