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Everybody wants to have a football season during the 2020-21 academic year, from the student-athletes who will play it, to the coaches who will coach it, to the administrators who will be relying on it as a way to fund a wide range of athletic endeavors. But the COVID-19 outbreak continues to upend daily life in the United States, and public safety measures are starting to encroach on the summer academic schedule in ways that could impact when schools like Penn State are able to begin practicing for the next football season. On April 16, Penn State announced that its summer sessions will be taught online. That includes the "Maymester," as well as Summer Sessions I and II, with the latter ending on Aug. 12. Since the Nittany Lions typically begin preseason practice in the first week of August, and since athletic director Sandy Barbour has said she doesn't want student-athletes returning to University Park before the campus is reopened, that would seem- ingly preclude an on-time start to the season, which is currently set to begin on Sept. 5 against Kent State. But the university didn't rule out the possibility that Summer Session II could include both online and in-person classes. If students are allowed back on campus by June 29, the first day of the second summer session, it would afford fall sports teams an opportunity to begin practicing well in advance of their sea- sons. That might seem unlikely, espe- cially with summer events such as the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts having already been canceled, but uni- versity officials are holding onto hope that conditions could improve to the point where a limited reopening of cam- pus is feasible. Barbour said the athletic department "had input into the decision" to leave open the possibility of in-person sum- mer classes. "What [administrators] did was, they said that because that's two and half months away, we will leave the door open to the possibility of students being able to return to campus and either continue to take the class from a remote delivery [while] being back on campus, or have them go back to the classroom, and it would be shared both remotely and in the classroom," Barbour said in an interview with the Penn State Sports Network. "And that gives the university, of which student-athletes are a part, the opportunity. Whether it's the LEAP pro- gram, whether it's summer orientation, whether it's student-athletes preparing NEWS & NOTES | F O O T B A L L Ocials mull options for 2020 season

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