This past week, a football game was played involving Austin Peay and Central Arkansas. Central Arkansas won 24-17 in a game that, from Austin Peay’s perspective, came down to a dearth of long snappers.
There is a joke in the world of sports media that when your story is all about the long snapper, it’s only because you’ve exhausted every other possible angle. In other words, you don’t have a story. For those of you who are unfamiliar with football, the long snapper is a player who comes into the game in highly specialized situations in which the ball needs to be snapped a long ways (duh), such as punts. Nice work if you can get it, but suffice it to say that no one will be having visions of Herschel Walker, Billy Cannon or Tom Brady when you take the field.
Austin Peay has three long snappers. All three were out this week. Why? They didn’t say, but the most likely guess is that they either tested positive for Covid or came into contact with someone who had. As to the player who handled the long-snapping duties this week: He sailed one way over the punter’s head (those of you who are Georgia fans know how this feels) and dribbled another between the punter’s legs. Central Arkansas banked points off both of these miscues.
But the key takeaway here is this: Football was played last week. For better or for worse, football has been played in the 2020 season.
In just a few weeks, on the weekend of September 26, the SEC will begin play. It will play a truncated schedule consisting of 10 games, conference-only. All games will be played before crowds that are capped at a mere fraction of their respective stadium’s capacity. Only two of the other Power 5 leagues will be playing this season, under similar plans/protocols.
Jamie Newman, a grad transfer from Wake Forest and Georgia’s best hope at the quarterback position, just made the decision to opt out of the 2020 season and begin prepping for the NFL draft. From his perspective the decision is totally understandable, yet it leaves Georgia’s quarterback situation in utter turmoil and virtually nullifies any chance we may have had to win a championship of any stripe this year. Of course Georgia still figures to be pretty good notwithstanding, a byproduct of years of Kirby Smart recruiting at an elite level. There is an intriguing rumor that Justin Fields, who transferred to Ohio State after the 2018 season, may transfer back to Georgia this year. (His school is not playing this year because they are in the Big 10, which has scrubbed their 2020 season.) This would be nice if it happened, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course, due to the unique circumstances surrounding the 2020 season, any championship won during this season is likely to have a huge asterisk affixed to it.
The good news, if it can be called good news, is that the 2020 season may not finish, if it even gets started. I have absolutely zero faith or trust in my fellow Americans to follow basic public health/safety protocols on a college campus or during a holiday weekend. Check the calendar: we are in a holiday weekend right now. I also have absolutely zero trust in our political leadership to adequately articulate, let alone enforce observance of, said public health/safety protocols. America during Covid is exactly like that town in Jaws where all the beaches are closed because there is a shark that is killing people, everyone knows that it is killing people, yet some people are upset that the beaches are closed. So everyone goes to the beach anyway, and sure enough, the shark shows up and kills people.
Consequently, I am expecting a MASSIVE spike in Covid cases in the coming weeks that will likely shut down the 2020 season long before any sort of championship is decided.
Oh well. We will try this again in 2021. See you then.
The two greatest years ever in the history of Georgia football: 1980, and next year.
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