With one team already pulling out of its bowl game, College Football Playoff unveils postponement and cancelation guidelines

For a while there, it seemed the 2021 college football season would pitch a shutout against the opponent that dominated and nearly defeated the 2020 season: the still-ongoing global pandemic. But with just a few ticks left on the proverbial game clock, COVID-19 is threatening to dent the scoreboard and, depending on how these next few weeks go, could mount a last-second rally to alter the as-yet-unscathed '21 campaign. 

First, the good news. 

To date, every single FBS game that has been put on the schedule has been played. Only one contest (to my knowledge) was rescheduled, but that game (Cal at USC) was eventually played, and even then that was only because of the draconian approach to risk assessment by the city of Berkeley's health department. Anywhere else in America, that game is played on its originally scheduled date of Nov. 13 rather than the rescheduled date of Dec. 4.

Now, the bad. It would be naive to think that string of luck will continue over the season's final weeks.

Already on Wednesday, Texas A&M announced it will not play in the Dec. 31 Gator Bowl against Wake Forest. Between season-ending injuries, opt-outs, transfers and a run of positive cases, the Aggies claimed to be down to just 38 available scholarship players. "It's unfortunate but we just don't have enough scholarship players to field a team," Jimbo Fisher said. The ACC and the Gator Bowl will effort to find a replacement team, but prospects don't look good. The 17th-ranked Demon Deacons' season might just be over unless they find: A) a 5-7 team willing to cut short its holiday break to return to campus and play a game on short notice, B) a team willing to play two bowl games, or C) (gulp) another team happens to become available due to cancelations elsewhere.

Within the hour of Texas A&M's announcement, the College Football Playoff announced updated procedures for the upcoming tournament: all media availability will again be virtual, teams are not required to travel until two days before the game instead the customary seven days, and all off-site bowl activity is purely optional. 

“We certainly wish we were not in this position,” said Hancock, “but the only responsible thing is to take whatever actions we can reasonably take to better protect those who play and coach the game.”

And then there's this, the CFP postponement and cancellation guidelines: 

1. If one team is unavailable to play, that team will have to forfeit the game. The opponent would advance to the national championship game.
2. If both teams are unavailable to play, the game will be a no contest event. The winner of the other semifinal game would be named the national champion.
3. If three teams are unavailable to play, the semifinal game with zero available participants will be a no contest event. The third team would forfeit, and the available team they were supposed to play would be named the national champion.
4. The national championship game will not be pushed back further than Jan. 14. If one team cannot play, they will forfeit and the opponent will be the national champion. If both cannot play, the game will be a no contest event, and the CFP National Championship will be vacated for this season.

"You mean after a regular season where every single game was played, we could see the national championship vacated???"

No one's willing to go there yet, but it's something to keep in mind and should be a wake-up call as to how and why we got here.

The new Omicron variant seems to be (and this is the point where I remind you I am not a virologist) more easily transmissible, even to the vaccinated, but leads to less severe cases among the infected. You'd have to have your head in the sand to miss all the scheduling mayhem endured by the NBA, NFL and college basketball over the last week or so, and you'd have to be delusional to think that wouldn't hit college football at some point -- particularly among teams that play later in the bowl schedule, with rosters that typically scatter to their home towns for a brief Christmas break before reassembling at the bowl site.

When the rules were written for the 2021 season, all leagues did so on the assumption that, by and large, only unvaccinated players would become infected. And so the test-and-trace method while also threatening forfeits for teams that can't play as scheduled seemed prudent. After all, only teams with large numbers of unvaccinated players would ever be in danger of missing a game. Right?

The newest strain has turned that logic on its head. Omicron has given us lots of breakthrough cases -- and lots of asymptomatic breakthrough cases at that. It's led a number of people -- from fans all the way to league executives -- to ask, "Is it really so dangerous to play a technically-infected but vaccinated-and-asymptomatic player?" It's why the NFL played two games last night, a Tuesday.

And yet, who really wants to be the guy who comes out and says, "Yes, it's fine for COVID-positive individuals to play"? 

At the same time, does it really make sense to sit a player -- for 10 days, no less --  who's had two and maybe even three shots and exhibits zero symptoms?  

The NFL has adjusted by no longer testing vaccinated players unless they show symptoms. That's what the NCAA did this season, but opinion now seems to be all over the map. SI's Ross Dellenger interviewed a number of experts and stakeholders and found differing opinions:

“There are real conversations about going back into isolation and back into [regular] COVID testing from last year,” says Jeremy Cauwels, a member of the NCAA advisory group and the chief physician of Sanford Health in South Dakota.

“The question that needs to be asked is, if the risk of severe illness—hospitalization, death, dying—is not there, if we’re not seeing that, how is this different than the common cold?” asks Jeff Dugas, Troy’s team doctor and an orthopedic surgeon in Birmingham who chairs the Sun Belt’s COVID-19 advisory panel. “Do we need to be freaking out just because it is a variant of COVID-19? Do we need to apply the same rules or change the rules?”

So far, all dozen bowl games have been played as scheduled. Thirty-three games sit between right now and the finish line, but only four must be played: the three CFP games, plus the FCS national championship. 

All three College Football Playoff games were completed as scheduled 11 months ago, in a world where effectively no one was vaccinated. Surely, the 2021-22 CFP can go off as scheduled, with nearly every player and coach vaccinated, up against a strain that largely produces mild infections. Right?