FBS Commissioner: I don't see us starting on time at this point; it feels like March again

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Power 5 conference leaders have told ESPN they still aren't ready to make any major changes to the sport's calendar, instead targeting the end of July to determine if the season can start on time.

West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, who is chair of the Football Oversight Committee and helped spearhead the NCAA-approved, six-week return plan that was approved last month, said moving forward with it will have to be a campus-to-campus decision.

"For us in college sports and sports in general," he said, "it's not trending the way we were hoping it would."

American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said Friday that if students don't return to college campuses this fall, "all bets are off."

"I'm still not of the mind to say, 'Gee, we shouldn't do this,' or 'We should throw in the towel,' but on the other hand, am I less confident than I was maybe a week ago? Absolutely," he said. "I don't think there's any way you wouldn't be.

"The key is going to be if our students return to campuses," he said. "It's very unlikely that we would play fall sports -- highly unlikely we would play fall sports -- if we didn't have our students back on campus. If our presidents and chancellors didn't feel it was safe to have our students on campus, it's very hard to see college sports happening in the fall."

One FBS commissioner, who spoke candidly to ESPN on the condition of anonymity, took it a step further.

"I'm very concerned," the commissioner said. "For so long, we've been saying we had time and things were going to change and we were very hopeful. I'm still hopeful that we have college football, I'm just more pessimistic that we won't have it on time. I don't see us starting on time at this point. One day I thought, 'I better look at the calendar,' because I felt like it was March 11 again."

While he hasn't had to halt the football workouts yet, Lyons said the next three weeks will be critical to making an informed decision about the season.

"We feel that last week of July -- you could potentially go into that first week in August -- which is roughly three weeks prior to the first game, and start making decisions, but that's really pushing up against the deadline at that point," Lyons said. "... What I'm being told by the medical experts is the next 2½ to 3 weeks is really going to tell us what August and the possibility of starting a season in September is going to look like more than continuing practice activities."

"It's not a declaratory process," Bowlsby said. "I don't think we can all of a sudden one day say, 'Yep, we've seen all the signs and we're full speed ahead.' I just don't think that's the nature of it. Some will be seeing positive tests throughout the fall. There will be occasions when games will have to be altered or canceled, but it's not likely everybody is going to be in the same situation at the same time. People are wanting to say, 'Here's the date, we either flip the switch or we don't flip the switch,' and it just doesn't work that way."

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