Syracuse athletic director John Wildhack says the ACC has had no conversations about canceling the 2020 football season amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking on a Zoom teleconference about the state of his athletic department and the fate of the fall sports schedule, Wildhack said Thursday that the consensus is, "We want to play."
Said Wildhack: "We have not, as a conference, had any discussions in terms of not playing. We want to play. We plan to play. What we don't know is when we're going to start and what form or what format we're going to start. Do you play with fans, do you not play with fans? So much is unknown, but the ADs and the conference office, we meet twice a week, and there's not been one second of conversation about not having a football season in some way, shape or form."
Wildhack cautioned that the decision is not going to be up to people like him.
Responding to comments that University of Arizona president Dr. Robert Robbins made Wednesday about not having a fall football season, Wildhack said, "There's so many things that people have stated that are floated out there, and the one thing I don't want to do is engage in speculation because there's so much we don't know, and we don't control this. What we do as a university, what we do as a conference, it will be led by the progress we make against the virus. It will be led by our elected officials, the governors of the individual states, in our case here the county executive, obviously the medical experts."
Wildhack is on a subcommittee the ACC put together to look at scenarios for the upcoming football season. Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson, Florida State coach Mike Norvell, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, athletic directors Dan Radakovich (Clemson), Boo Corrigan (NC State) and Blake James (Miami), and ACC senior associate commissioner for football Michael Strickland are also on the subcommittee.
While the ideal scenario is to begin in the fall, there are too many unknowns to make a decision now. Among those unknowns: When will governors open states, when will university presidents open campuses, and when will it be safe to resume training? If there are no clear answers to those questions, the possibility exists that the season goes into the spring -- and ultimately affects the 2021 season.
"We haven't spent a lot of time -- I say we, the conference -- in terms of that, but if it came to that, one of the concerns would be what would be the impact on the '21 season and how would it condense the offseason?" Wildhack said. "So if that was a path that ultimately conferences wanted to pursue, those conversations would be front and center."
During a recent phone interview, ACC commissioner John Swofford couldn't say whether there was a hard and fast date where conferences had to make decisions about when the football season can begin.
"The hope is there will be a fall sports season at some point, but from the point of games starting, how far back do you need to work so that, from a health and safety standpoint, players have had the time to train and be in the kind of shape they should be in when games start?" Swofford said. "We'll need to work together nationally to come up with protocols that would come into play to address that."