Could Michigan football play in an empty Big House this fall?

I don’t think they will play at all.  We are no longer “flattening the curve,” we are just living in a different world.  I don’t even pretend to know the know the agendas at play, but the measures being taken, enhanced, tightened, simply dramatically outweigh the conditions. You think we are going from no human being can stand within 6 feet of another to allowing human beings to be all piled on top of one another, sweating, grunting, etc. within a couple months?  At this point I am not sure how kids will possibly return to school, at all, really, let alone athletics.

There is a new normal that is being established and it almost certainly does not include athletic competition.  Does anybody really care about Michigan football at this point anyway?  Most are busy trying to figure what they can do with their lives.

It's likely that universities, and K-12, remain closed.

The football season is not happening. 

Getting more difficult to get into recruiting news, or any team related info quickly, bummed.

At a minimum, it will not be full

I actually wonder about the long term repercussions for college sports.   I assume this would mean no tv money.   That would obviously be a pretty big deal 

What if there was widespread availability of rapid testing?     Some percentage if players will have had it already.   That could be determined pretty easily.   For the remainder, do a check before they leave to travel for an away game snd do a recheck the morning of the game.   Obviously only makes sense if virus is under control with no local outbreaks and that we have very significant testing capability.   Neither of those assumptions seem crazy to me.

This seems like the best case scenario at this point. It sucks but it's probably most likely that we will not have a football season at all.

Without a vaccine, proven cure, or general herd immunity, it seems grossly irresponsible to have people play contact sports with other people from across the country, not to mention packing hundreds of thousands of people into stadiums across the country every week. 

MAYBE you could play football in empty stadiums if you could test every single player, coach and staff member for coronavirus every week and isolate anyone that tests positive. Then you can avoid spreading it on the field. But that's an expensive proposition when you have no ticket revenue. Sure, Michigan and most of the Big Ten could afford it, but a lot of teams can't. 

Unfortunately, it just seems like there is a very low probability that football gets played in 2020. What you'll probably see is first teams will cancel their summer practices, then their non-conference games, then try to delay the conference season start, but eventually the whole season will most likely be scrapped. 

I'm hopeful that some kind of breakthrough in testing and treatment will come between now and the fall, and maybe by then a big chunk of the population will have immunity because they will have been infected and recovered. But I think we should all be prepared for the most likely outcome of the trajectory we're currently on.

Well this is a depressing thread.  It goes from questioning whether football will be played in empty stadiums to suggesting that this will never pass, school will never resume, and people will forever need to stay 6 feet away from each other.  And for these reasons, I'm out!

I think it's relatively unlikely, but at the same time I think there still is a very real chance of football being handled entirely regularly. None of these social distancing/shutdown measures were  designed to protect the entire population until there is a vaccine or miracle cure. Flattening the curve doesn't mean eliminating the curve. Now these shutdowns are taking longer than they would with a particularly bad flu or something hyper-aggressive like a hemorrhagic fever (i.e. ebola and the like) because unlike them Covid is a slow moving illness. But it's not a 6-12 months slow moving disease, more like 3-5 weeks in terms of progression from exposure to full recovery/death.

It will be a tough decision as to when to begin weening people off the relative sense of security provided by stay-at-home orders. The first step will be to allow those who already had it back into public life (antibody test being a key here), the second step will be to let people back who are not in a high risk group - the highest risk group (i.e. the very old and very sick) may indeed have the restrictions in place until a vaccine/treatment is released.

The key requirements for this to occur are (1) success of social distancing in bringing infections down (2) built up infrastructure for testing, equipment and hospital capacity to handle a 'regular' flow of Covid cases and (3) establishment and maintenance of good hygiene protocols.  Now with all of them the ball is in *our* court not the virus's. In other words, whether there's football or not is mostly down to whether we get our act together as a society.

With regard to the original issue - no crowd games - I think that's something that would only be considered IF the sports league in question pressed for it during the 1st stage of the release of restrictions. A pro league would be a likelier candidate for that due to the involved financial pressures and rewards. In college sports, it might be more likely to be a plain choice between having no games or fully attended games but without the old and sick.

There will be no NCAA or NFL this year. 

The 2021 NFL draft will be interesting. A lot of 2nd year players will more than likely be entering the draft without playing an entire season.

Only if John O'Korn is at QB.

Then who will pay Warde's exhorbitant salary?

This will all go away in phases.  May 1 is the first, and will still practice a few safeguards.  

I think it's a possibility. Don't agree with it and hope it doesn't end up being the case, but I think it's possible.

I don't see it happening. As many others have said, if it's not safe for 110K fans to congregate, it's not safe for the 1K combined players, coaches, officials, admin staff, trainers etc. for the home and away teams combined to congregate.

I imagine that if they did decide to play without fans, they would use the practice facility as it has a full-size turf field and I believe has bleachers for the families of players to sit in.

Very little chance that there will be any football in 2020.   If it isn't safe for spectators, and it likely won't be, what is the justification to expose the players?  Right, the billions in TV revenue.  If that flies, we have much more to worry about than the virus.  I know I won't be going anywhere with 106,000 people for a long time.  2021 maybe. 

I can’t imagine they’d risk the well being of the players, coaches, officials, and broadcast crew to play football.

Especially the players who sweat and bleed all over each other for the entire game.

I’ve got a solid $100 that says there is no football this year. 

I’m in the minority, it looks like, but I think this is very plausible. By fall, I think the outbreak is both fairly well contained with just a few small outbreaks here and there, which are quickly handled. I think by then there are a lot of people who have already had it and are resistant so it’s not spreading like wildfire still. Probably more importantly, there should be a lot of testing available. 100,000 random people together would still be a bad idea, but 300 recently-tested people together might be an acceptably small risk. 

My sister sent me a story about a choir practice in Washington state. 45 of the 60 people there got the virus and 2 have died. 
Could Michigan play football with no one singing The Victors?

The real answers is--re-assess in July. 

But if I had to bet, I would bet that we do have football in the Fall, esp. with the "wide-spread' availability of the rapid (60-90min) test by then. 

If we do have football, there is certainly a non-zero chance that something could happen like hotspots between teams that lead to ending the season early. 

The 100K crowds seem much less likely but I think not literally 0% chance. Hard to say until we get to July. 

No way for college.  If social gathering is still that limited, college teams will not be allowed to practice and campuses will be virtual like today.

I came for the jokes.

EDIT:  Appreciate everyone's legit concern.  I expected more ticket price commentary, better view from my couch, awful home schedule, etc.  Leaving my original comment b/c I'll take the negs.  Was hoping for some levity in the thread.

Be safe all.

Absolutely not. If they did this it would be a circumstance in which the players would stay under quarantine well before and well after each game...meaning they would have to be under quarantine the entire football season. Meaning the couldn't go to class. So no, this would only happen at osu where the players don't attend class anyway. 

I think there is a very good chance of this happening.  I think the MLB will be the test case for this (and also the PGA).  This assumes the disease is at least controlled at that point.  Not a huge risk for 100 players + 50 coaches + 150 TV people, etc., huge risk for 110,000.  

Teams like Illinois won't miss a beat.

This shit needs to end!  I can’t fathom no football. It’s the one thing that helps me through the transition of summer - winter. I’m gonna go cry now.

Yes. The stadium will be empty.

The attendance streak of 100,000 will mysteriously continue though.

I would be happy with that .