Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1276571
James Franklin's seventh season at Penn State will be unlike any other he has ever experienced in his decade as a head football coach. That's a given. The upheaval of the past few months has forced every coach at every level of foot- ball to improvise. In the first few months of the pandemic, coaches had to figure out new ways of keeping their players active and engaged while also ensuring that those players were taking whatever steps were necessary to avoid exposing themselves and their families to the coronavirus. When campuses began opening back up in June, coaches then had to team up with school administra- tors and public health experts to devise ways of training and practicing safely. Despite all that effort, as July turned to August, there was little clarity as to what the 2020 season will look like, or even whether it will be possible to play I N T E R V I E W J A M E S F R A N K L I N UNCHARTED TERRITORY As college football seeks a path forward, the veteran coach addresses PSU's on-field concerns will require fans to wear masks in the stadium, and no tailgating will be permitted in the adjacent lots. Playing games in mostly empty stadiums might seem like a buzzkill for players and fans alike, but the al- ternatives are worse. One alternative would be to not play a season at all. That would be a financial catastro- phe for athletic departments across the country; it's been estimated that Power Five schools will lose a com- bined total of $4 billion if there's no season. Most schools began putting austerity measures in place even be- fore the fate of the 2020 season had been determined. That includes Penn State, which confirmed in July that it would be instituting salary cuts for employees throughout the athletic department for the duration of the fiscal year. If it proves impossible to play this fall, colleges would have one fallback plan available to them: They could push the season back to the spring of 2021. There are a number of potential problems with moving the season, including the possibility that NFL- worthy players would skip it in order to focus on the draft, which is sched- uled to take place April 29-May 1. Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour called spring football "a last resort." But while it's not anyone's first choice, no one has dismissed the idea outright. For now, schools are hoping that frequent testing, flexible scheduling models and widespread adherence to safety protocols will be enough to allow for a fall season. "We certainly are continuing to take a look at the science, take a look at the conditions around us," Barbour said. "And we also certainly will, as the university settles on what they're going to be doing for the fall, kind of fold up under that as well, under- standing that we're also going to need to then take some different ap- proaches as it relates to competition and travel for student-athletes as we arrive at that point." ■