NCAA president Mark Emmert “very concerned” about fall sports

The ebb and flow of the outlook for sports continues to keep us on our toes due to the coronavirus.

We were all really excited to watch NBA scrimmages last week, then Major League Baseball playing meaningful games felt somewhat “normal” despite a lack of fans in the stands.

But what about the big one? What about football?

Well, according to NCAA president Mark Emmert, the future of college football is still very much uncertain. Emmert told ESPN’s Heather Dinnich that he is still “very concerned” about fall sports. However, he believes the NCAA can find their way based on what happens on campuses and in professional sports in the coming weeks.

“We do get to see what happens when people return to campus,” Emmert told ESPN. “You get to learn a lot from what’s going on with professional sports. We get to see how the testing protocols emerge and how that can be more effective, especially if we can get antigen testing going, for keeping track of the virus on campuses.”

Emmert is warning that fans of college sports should not put too much stock in what happens in the professional leagues in the near future. While he believes there are lessons to be learned, he admits that the logistics of college sports pose unique challenges.

“It’s easy to think about college sports as some kind of analog to professional sports, but professional sports leagues have 30 or so teams,” Emmert said. “We have 19,000 teams across the NCAA over all three seasons, and in the fall we’ll run 22 championships. The idea of making that all fit into anything that looks like normal is a challenge to say the least.”

College football teams have been permitted to start games a week early to get extra games in. But there is still a lot of time between now and the end of August. Do you think fall sports will happen as planned?

Read the rest of ESPN’s report on Emmert here.