Anchor Drop, July 20, 2020: Waiting

Good morning.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

So... yeah. Today is July 20, and if this were a normal year, SEC Media Days would have been last week and fall camp would be coming up in a couple of weeks. We’re 47 days from the scheduled season opener, but then two of the Power Five conferences have already announced they’re going with only conference play and I’d assume the SEC will probably head that way as well.

But... we don’t know. And I’m honestly not sure what the delay is. I’ve reached a point where I’m agnostic about whether the season will be played — the longer we go with nothing definitive one way or the other, the more unsure I am about anything. And now, NFL players are concerned about their safety in training camp, and that isn’t a good sign, because if the NFL is going to think about not playing, college football is definitely not going to be playing. I guess. But who really knows? MLB is supposedly getting things going again this week, the NBA and NHL are a week and a half or so away.

Nobody really knows about college, though, but here’s Pat Forde at SI going there. I’m just going to leave it at that because it’s something a lot of sportswriters have mostly avoided, instead trying to blame this on random people not wearing masks, which is silly because if you’re not extremely online why would you even think to wear one unless somebody in a position of authority says so?

And as the Hustler writes, there’s a whole housing situation to figure out if Vanderbilt is even going to have students back on campus, which it basically has to do for us to have a football season.

Actual Sports on TV

ESPN is showing an MLS game between Inter Miami and New York City FC at 8:00 AM CT, which is something.

That aside, here’s your live sports schedule (all times CT):

• EPL: 11:55 AM: Sheffield United v. Everton (NBC Sports)
• EPL: 2:10 PM: Wolverhampton Wanderers v. Crystal Palace (NBC Sports)
• Serie A: 2:30 PM: Juventus v. Lazio (ESPN+)
• USL Championship: 6:00 PM: Hartford Athletic v. Loudoun County FC (ESPN2)

And if you’ve got MLB.TV, there are some exhibition games.