The Indiana football team is trying to get ready for the 2020 season, but it is looking more and more like that is not going to happen.
We knew this may happen, but we have clung on to the hope that it wouldn’t. This year has been one of those years you just hope to forget but the possibility of college football was at least a bright spot among the darkness.
We even got a glimpse of what the season was going to look like when the Big Ten released their schedule last week. In a month Indiana was to head to Wisconsin and play the Badgers in hopes of pulling off a big upset to start the year. Then they were to take on the gauntlet of the Big Ten East to try and show that they are making strides in football.
But news is starting to trickle out that the Big Ten now wants to cancel the season as early as Tuesday. It appears that the Big Ten and Pac-12 are wanting to cancel, while the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 are looking to still try and play. The MAC canceled this weekend and it appears to be the first step in others doing the same thing.
We all want everyone to be safe and for them to play in a safe environment. We don’t want any player to get COVID-19 or have any complications from it. That is not what we are saying here, but this is the beginning of one of our worst sports fears. The loss of college football.
We can argue if they should play or not and we could do it for a long time, but at the end of the day as college football fans we would love for them to play.
It is what many fans look forward to all year long and what makes Saturdays in the fall like holidays. Friends and family gather around why you watch your favorite team or rival play. The arguments and water cooler talks are what make this such a great time.
For Indiana, they are about to lose what looked like their best team in years and it may be the last time Hoosier fans get to see Whop Philyor in uniform. Being selfish it will be an absolute shame not to get to see this team play this year. They may look to play in the spring but you are going to lose a lot of your top players as they chose to get ready for the NFL draft. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Philyor was one of those players.
It is an absolute travesty what is happening to hundreds of thousands of people with COVID-19 and it in the scheme of things sports really doesn’t matter. But as a sports fan and college football fan this is our worst sports nightmare. It is secondary to what is going in the world, and a decision we must deal with but one we are going to truly miss.