With the lockout lingering (it’ll be nine weeks old on Friday, less the day or so that it was lifted), most football fans assume that there will be no football on Sunday come September.
But there likely will be football on Sundays. It just won’t be NFL football.
College football surely will take advantage of the vacancy, shifting games from Saturday if Sunday no longer is occupied. When, for example, the NFL shifted the start of the regular season from Labor Day weekend, college football filled the void, with games on Sunday, Sunday night, and Monday night.
In a recent interview with KTAR in Phoenix, Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott said his conference will be ready to play on Sundays, if the NFL isn’t. “We certainly have an eye on it, and I think we’ll be flexible and opportunistic if the situation presents itself,” Scott said.
“But we’re not spending a lot of time on it,” Scott added. “I personally expect that the NFL is gonna settle if not by the beginning of their season early into their season. So I don’t think that’s a long-term strategy for us, but I think, yeah, we’ll be nimble and we’ll be opportunistic if there’s any opportunity to get big exposure on Sunday, why not?”
FOX recently landed the Pac-10 contract, and Gus Johnson has been hired to be the lead play-by-play announcer for the games. So, even without the NFL on Sundays, life will go on.
With football.
Hey, we’d prefer that it be NFL football, but we’ll take what we can get.