Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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4 MAY 2020 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED D uring this unprecedented time in global history, when projecting a return date to normalcy is guesswork as the COVID-19 pandemic steers the timeline, Irish head football coach Brian Kelly did provide one important date many have worried and wondered about. In an interview with ESPN television host Scott Van Pelt March 26, Kelly provided a dead- line to have his team together and conditioned well enough to play an on-time and uninter- rupted football season that is set to begin Aug. 29, with a trip to Ireland for a game against Navy. "I think July 1," Kelly said. "You're going to need at least four weeks, the strength and conditioning coaches are going to want six, sports medicine is probably looking at four to six weeks. "The realistic goal here is a minimum of four weeks of condition- ing before you put them into camp." After five seasons (2005-09) play- ing quarterback at Notre Dame, Evan Sharpley worked the routine and understands how important these weeks of preseason prep are even before training camp opens. "When I hear the July 1 date, Coach Kelly is not really even talking about the football side of things," Sharpley said. "For me, it's the injury side of things he's most worried about, not having their bodies ready after taking so much time off, not hav- ing that protective suit of armor you build during the spring and summer months." Kelly's self-imposed July 1 dead- line carries consequences far beyond satisfying the appetite of fans and sportswriters who wouldn't know what to do this fall without Fighting Irish football. College football weekends are the financial lifeline of athletic pro- grams throughout the country, es- pecially at schools such as Notre Dame, which covers much of its secondary (olympic) sports budget from football revenue. A recent study published by Forbes found that in the three years from 2016-18, Notre Dame ranked fourth in the country in football-driven prof- its at $76 million — which equates to about $25.3 million per year and $4 million per home game. The ripple effect of losing an en- tire or even a partial football season would leave athletic departments around the country running on fi- nancial fumes. "College football is going to be affected if we're not playing in 90 days," Kelly ominously predicted. At a separate building on campus, Irish head basketball coach Mike Brey is keeping his pencil close, his adding machine fully charged and his cost-cutting options open. The cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Tournaments for men's and wom- en's basketball will reportedly bring about a 63 percent revenue reduc- tion for every school less what they expected to receive from the NCAA's direct distribution fund in 2020. USA Today first reported that the cancellation of March Madness shrunk the profit pie from about $600 million to $225 million for schools to share. Brey said that this financial blow — likely the first of others to come — brought a budgetary warning from Notre Dame vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick. "What athletic directors from all over the country are thor- oughly worried about is how deeply is this [pandemic] going to impact finances and how we can be better stewards of the budget," Brey said. "We don't have any perfect answers yet." For Brey, he expects the first notable financial challenge for his program to come this summer during the construction of his 2020-21 pre-conference schedule. Power Five basketball coaches routinely fill their non-confer- ence slates with "guarantee" or "buy" games to build a portfolio for their season-ticket packages and presumably stockpile some sure wins. Notre Dame schedules about eight such guarantee games each season, at an estimated cost of about $90,000 per, for a total expendi- ture of approximately $720,000. "Do we start to play more home- and-home series and not buy as many games?" Brey suggested of replacing the pricey one-and-done option with a reciprocal two-game approach that carries no cost to either school beyond travel. "And these home-and-homes, are they bus rides if they are road games?" And even Brey admits that most of the real-time budgetary projections and conversations still presume the lucrative 2020 Irish football season will remain fully intact and go on as scheduled — aspirational hopes that shrink as COVID-19 spreads. "I'm trying to stay positive, but I wouldn't rule anything out at this point," Brey said. "I'd like to get my guys back in June for summer school, but maybe it's not until Labor Day, maybe it's after that. Does college basketball not even start until Jan. 1? "I'm thinking all of these things through. We've got to be prepared for everything." ✦ The Clock Is Ticking On The Football Season's Salvation UPON FURTHER REVIEW TODD D. BURLAGE Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly believes his team must be able to come together by July 1 for the 2020 college football sea- son to start on time uninterrupted. PHOTO BY MIKE MILLER