Penn State Sports Magazine
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7 2 M A R C H 2 0 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M P enn State's 2020 athletic year ended on a baseball field in Oxford, Ohio. The Nittany Lions had been trail- ing by four runs going into the ninth in- ning of their series opener against Miami (Ohio) on March 12. When Mason Nadeau slapped a grounder to first base, a Red- Hawks infielder scooped it up and stepped on the bag — the final out in a 5-1 loss. Coach Rob Cooper had known when his team headed to Ohio that its season was in doubt. Games of all kinds were being can- celed in rapid succession, and 20 minutes before the first pitch, he learned that the rest of the season had been suspended indefinitely. His team would be the last Penn State squad to see action during the 2019-20 school year. Cooper decided not to tell his players. He wanted them to enjoy their last game, hoping that they wouldn't overhear the news from someone in the crowd. After Nadeau grounded out to end the game, the coach gathered his team and told them what was happening. "This is not a fun thing for me to have to tell you guys," he explained, "but as of right now, it's looking like the season is going to be canceled. I don't have any more information other than what I'm telling you. I know it hurts." EARLY CONCERNS So much has happened over the past five years, both in college sports and the world at large, that it's easy to for- get how wrenching the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were. With every turn of the daily news cycle, the pandemic recedes further into the background. The gradual return to normalcy, to full sta- diums and busy travel itineraries, has likewise helped push COVID's early days deeper down the collective memory hole. Still, it's worth remembering those early days, in part because the way in which college sports have evolved has been different from what a lot of people foresaw when COVID hit. The most obvious concern initially was that the pandemic would be the end of many nonrevenue programs. Some were even predicting a contraction of all col- lege sports. Travel was surely going to be more difficult, and that would likely mark a return to an earlier era of intercollegiate sports when conferences were made up of regional rivals and road trips were mostly to schools within driving distance. The loss of programs was real. In the first 10 months of the 2020 calendar year, 200 varsity programs were dropped across the NCAA's three divisions, along with 27 programs in the NAIA, according to data compiled by ScholarshipStats.com. Some of those decisions may have been in the works before the pandemic hit, but oth- ers were tied to the loss of revenue from football and basketball. All told, 78 Division I programs were axed. The biggest casualty was tennis, with 21 D-I teams disappearing, followed by swimming (11) and golf (seven). Boasting one of the nation's big- gest collections of varsity sports, Penn State might have seemed to be vulner- able. While the average Division I school at the time fielded 18 varsity programs, Penn State fielded 31. That was more than Michigan (29) and nearly as many as league leader Ohio State (36). Despite the cost of maintaining such a broad-based program, then-athletics director Sandy Barbour insisted that the school's austerity plan didn't involve dis- banding teams. Instead, the school cut salaries throughout the athletics depart- ment and saved money with the curtailing of travel for games and recruiting. Barbour made it clear from the start that eliminat- ing programs would be a last resort. "Our 31 programs and 800-plus stu- dent-athletes — that's really in our DNA, it's part of who we are," Barbour said. "That is certainly not something that we're looking at right now. "We do continue to have a lot of un- knowns around what the financial situa- tion will be, so we're looking at scenario- planning and looking at what steps we might need to take. But I think our pri- mary focus is on holding our 31 programs and our 800-plus student-athletes to- gether and finding a way as Penn Staters and as a Penn State community to come through this on the other side." FITS AND STARTS Back in March 2020, there was no tell- ing whether it would be possible to stage a football season of any kind in the fall. At the time, it was unclear whether Penn State's campus would even be open. The only real consensus was that the season would not begin as scheduled on Sept. 5 against Nevada. James Franklin said he and his staff had planned for mul- tiple contingencies. "We had already worked on about six different models — if we were able to get OPERATION SHUTDOWN Five years ago, the pandemic brought a halt to sports at Penn State M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M Then-coach Rob Cooper's baseball squad was the last PSU team to see action during the COVID-shortened 2019-20 athletic year. PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS