What if you could contest a modified, ultra-shortened season during a six week period in spring, in the form of five or six team “pods”?
With the caveat that a lot of progress would have to be made in the next couple of months towards flattening the curve and knowing how to manage COVID, playing a radically shortened season of (five or) six “regular-season” games would allow for most teams to only have a season that is marginally longer than what they would do for spring practices. And from those games, it is possible to come up with an FCS Championship.
Burton's proposed East Pod consists of 26 teams:
• Yankee Division: Maine, New Hampshire, Holy Cross, Merrimack, Rhode Island, Bryant
• Empire Division: Colgate, Stony Brook, Albany, Fordham, LIU
• Post Road Division: CCSU, Sacred Heart, Monmouth (NJ), Marist, Wagner
• Keystone Division: Villanova, Lafayette, Lehigh, Delaware, Towson
• Colonial Division: Georgetown, Richmond, James Madison, William & Mary, Elon
The Division winners would play off to determine a Pod champion, and the winners of the East, South, Midwest and West Pods would face off in the national semifinals. Burton has the preseason starting March 1, the first game as early as March 18 and the national championship game May 22.
It took Burton a lot of work to sort out a schedule (and her deserves kudos for the creative Division names) but notice something?
Yup, the Ivy League is missing. Even in a dream scenario Burton can't see the Ivy League presidents relenting and allowing their teams to go on in the playoffs.
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EXTRA POINT
I was scrolling through the DISH onscreen TV guide recently and came across an episode of the old Superman show featuring George Reeves. When I was a kid I loved that show. I'm going to check out the guide to make sure I don't miss it when one of the episodes I still remember comes on. From the IMDB summary of that episode:
Future TV western star Chuck Connors appears in this classic episode as a gangly hillbilly who happens to be named Sylvester J. Superman. Arriving in Metropolis to seek his fortune, the clueless Sylvester answers a classified ad for the "real" Superman, and before long has been hired by a woman named Marge to deliver a lemon meringue pie to her fiancé Steve, stationed at a remote Air Force weather base in Alaska.
I'm also going to keep an eye out for another episode in which Clark Kent slips in the shower, hits his head and the resultant amnesia leaves him unaware that he's actually Superman. (Editor's note: How the "strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men" could have bullets bounce off his chest but suffer amnesia from a fall might be a bit of a plot hole, doncha think?)
But I digress. I'm hoping to catch that episode because Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the show, gave a presentation I participated in when I was in college. Thanks to some friends who started chanting my name, I somehow ended up onstage with her to act out a scene in the role of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper. Neill gave me the script and I was doing fine until I got to the part where Clark slipped in the shower. The hotdog in me came out and I decided it would be funny to lean back against the wall behind me and slide to the floor.
Unfortunately, the "wall" behind me was actually a movie screen. You can imagine what happened.
When our act was over, Ms. Neill signed a copy of the school newspaper for me:
She wrote: "Hi Bruce – Thanks for "hamming" Noel "Lois Lane" Neill.