Texas Tech football: Matt Wells needs 2020 season played as scheduled

While we wait to see what the college football season will look like, Texas Tech football head coach Matt Wells needs the season to go on as planned because the alternatives would severely hurt his rebuild.

Though we are still nearly five months away from the season, Texas Tech football fans and the rest of the college sports world are already trying to figure out what the 2020 season will look like in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.  There are a number of possibilities being thrown about and all seem equally plausible and equally strange.

The impact of the pandemic has already been felt throughout the sports world, most notably for college sports fans by the cancellations of the NCAA Tournament and College World Series, two events that Texas Tech fans have grown increasingly fond of over the past several years.  But college football has also felt the pain, though in a much less noticeable manner.

While it doesn’t compare to the abrupt cancellations of the season that spring sports had to accept, the loss of a spring football period is not insignificant for NCAA football programs.  Those 15 practices are crucial parts of the football calendar as they allow for the installation of new schemes or plays, give players an opportunity to acclimate to new positions, and help coaches start to find new starters and contributors to replace departed players.

All of those were going to be key items on Matt Wells’ checklist this spring.  Now, such important endeavors as piecing together a new offensive line that returns only two starters from week one of last year, finding a pair of new starting safeties, and knocking the rust off of two QBs that missed essentially the entire 2019 season will have to wait until fall camp…if there is one.

Also, don’t overlook the importance of the summer for college football programs.  During those months when Lubbock empties out as the vast majority of the student body heads home or to summer internships allowing the rest of the community to finally get a table at a restaurant without a 30-minute wait, the Red Raider football team goes through perhaps the most important time on the calendar for their physical well being as they prepare their bodies for the rigors of the upcoming season.

Tory Lindley, a senior associate athletic director at Northwestern and the president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association recently gave Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde some insight as to what a reasonable time frame would be in order for players to be able to get into shape for the upcoming season.

"“I cannot believe we can do it in a truncated time period of what we already do from a practice standpoint,” he said. “That right now is the month of August. It would be difficult to believe it could be shorter than it has been for decades.”"

Making the decision as to when teams can resume organized activities is also dicey.  Would it be fair for teams in Texas to have the benefit of summer workouts if Governor Greg Abbott eases restrictions while programs in states with more rigid restrictions such as New York or Michigan continue to abide by the current or even increased isolation standards?  Thus, one has to wonder if the NCAA will wait to allow teams to reconvene until all states allow for such measures.  That could have massive implications for when the season begins.

There are a number of people floating around theories as to when the season will begin or how it will look.  The problem for Wells is that none of them outside of a normal season, played with fans in the stadium, are going to be what he needs in the second year of his rebuilding project.

There’s no way around the fact that this is the most important season of Wells’ head coaching career.  A 4-8 debut season did little to endear him to an already cynical and jaded fan base, a huge portion of which still doubts he’s the man that can bring Red Raider football back to national relevance.

The only shot Wells has at truly turning the corner in the battle to win back his constituency is for the 2020 season to be played this fall (he could endure a season that begins in October rather than September) and for his team to have a winning record.  But the closer we come to August, the more people are theorizing that the season will look extremely different.  So let’s look at how Wells’ program will be impacted if the different theories that are being floated around actually come to fruition.