UNC may have found a way to make football work

[kitzbuel]

UNC just shut their campus down this week and is sending all students home for exclusively online course work. This apparently now paves the way for the football team to have a bubble according to Mac Brown. Without any students on campus the infection threat to the football program is significantly reduced.

https://www.si.com/college/2020/08/19/unc-notre-dame-football-bubble-coronavirus-outbreak

So his answer to the question of whether you need students at a university in order to have college sports is no. It will be interesting to see what other schools do in reaction. Notre Dame is probably next in the chute to figure out if they can run football without students at the school.

If this becomes the model, the university campuses could essentially become sports training complexes with the education mission being done online. Clearly another step towards delinking the athletic role from the educational role within the current college athletics model.

[Martin Centre Mad Man]

UNC just shut their campus down this week and is sending all students home for exclusively online course work. This apparently now paves the way for the football team to have a bubble according to Mac Brown. Without any students on campus the infection threat to the football program is significantly reduced.

https://www.si.com/college/2020/08/19/unc-notre-dame-football-bubble-coronavirus-outbreak

So his answer to the question of whether you need students at a university in order to have college sports is no.

Alabama taxpayers will be thrilled to take this model one step further. They will no longer fund all of those frivolous educational attachments to their state football team. No more labs, non-athlete students, faculty...

[kitzbuel]

IMO it is an inevitable progression towards the recognition that high level college athletics are indeed a separate business entity. This supports requirements to compensate college athletes as employees of that entity.