Reports were rampant this weekend that the college football season is likely to be canceled, due to unrealistic and complicated NCAA safety requirements.
But that doesn’t mean your Saturday afternoons will be devoid of football.
According to a report from Pro Football Talk, if college football opts out of Saturday, the NFL is more than willing to opt in.
“Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the NFL likely will move games from Sundays to Saturday, if college football doesn’t proceed this season,” PFT’s Mike Florio reported. “It’s unclear whether the games would be broadcast, streamed, or distributed on a pay-per-view basis, but the league likely would backfill the vacant Saturday windows with NFL content.
“The easiest approach would be to treat each Saturday like the late-season tripleheader the league staged in 2019, with a game at 1:00 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 8:15 p.m. ET. That would trim the Sunday slate by three games each week.”
Though, as Florio points out, there are some contractual hurdles the NFL would have to clear to make that happen.
“The league would need a one-year dispensation from the broadcast antitrust exemption, which allows the NFL to sell TV rights in a league-wide bundle but prevents the NFL from televising games on Friday or Saturday from Labor Day through early December.”
On Saturday, the Mid-American Conference became the first Division I league to cancel its season due to the virus.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
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