Reaction: CDC Recommends No Events with More than 50 People

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention just recommended no gatherings of 50+ people for the next eight weeks. That’s something that clearly will have an impact on professional sports that are currently suspended, but also gives a bit of insight into when college football teams might start resuming practice again.

Eight weeks from now would be May 10th.

This recommendation shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has been following the news in the last few days, but it is a blow to anyone hoping that Notre Dame may be back practicing in April. With well over 50 players on the team practicing not to mention the coaching and support staff, there really is no feasible way to practice as a team for the next couple of months.

May 10th would be ambitious at this point in time and that doesn’t even take into account what may be happening with students returning to school. It may also have an impact on the April/May evaluation period. 

Spring ball for high school programs is the main reason why the evaluation period, which starts on April 15th this year, is when it is. Those teams won’t be practicing so even if coaches are back on the road, the evaluation part of it won’t be active.

What does this mean for all the missed practices and missed chances for coaches to be on the road recruiting? What does it mean for the missed on-campus visits? We won’t know that until the NCAA decides to directly address any changes to the recruiting calendar and potentially make amendments to allow teams to regain practice time.

It’s impossible to speculate when things might return to normalcy in everyday life, but if things do start progressing towards the summer conditioning and fall camp happening as previously scheduled, we may see some programs like Notre Dame gain additional practice time to make up for the spring.

This is going to be a tricky issue for the NCAA to deal with. Right now there are programs like Clemson who were able to hold eight practices and then others like Notre Dame who barely started spring ball. It would seem fair for the NCAA to grant additional practice time to programs who were not able to practice in the spring.

There is so much to be worked out that is outside of their control before the Irish get back practicing or get on the road recruiting, but it’s something that is going to have to be figured out at some point. Hopefully as days pass in the next few weeks we gain more clarity and can start thinking about Notre Dame football as “coming soon” rather than “TBD”.