Ohio Governor Non-Committal on Ohio State Football for Fall

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is a big enough Ohio State football fan that he attended the Buckeyes' loss to Clemson in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl.

Whether he'll be back in Ohio Stadium this fall for OSU's drive to the 2020 playoff, DeWine can't say quite yet.

“I think it's much too early to be making any decisions about fall,” DeWine said Tuesday during his afternoon COVID-19 briefing in Columbus. “I don't think we know enough. I don't think we know where we're going to be. I don't think we know how many tests that we will have. But what I think we do know is that whether it's a business, whether it is a college, whether it is K-12, whenever they do open again, it's going to be different."

In recent weeks, both OSU head coach Ryan Day and athletic director Gene Smith  have said they will wait on the ever-changing developments around the coronavirus' models before guessing about the future of college football in 2020.

DeWine leans that way, as well, but his comments paint a more ominous picture.

"This is the hardest thing for me to accept, and so I suspect it's hard for other people to accept, but until there is a vaccine, this monster as I've referred to it is going to be lurking around us," he said. "And so when we start businesses back up, when we start schools back up, when we start colleges back up, it's going to be different.”

Smith said Friday he struggles to accept the optics of barring students or fans from campus, but inviting players back to compete on the field.

“It seems inconsistent to me that we could say it’s unsafe for the fans to be in the stands but it’s safe for the players, to be in that gathering environment.” Smith said. “I don’t know. I haven’t gone down that path, but I think you guys know me, I tend to lean to work with my colleagues in the Big Ten and work with my colleagues nationally. My focus, first and foremost right now, is if we’re going to do something, how do we make sure the players are safe first?”

Day told the Big Ten Network on Monday that he targets a six-week run-up to the season for the Buckeyes to get prepared for play.

Before tackling the Ohio State football issue, DeWine must first answer the question about professional baseball in the state, where both the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians are currently idle, along with several minor league teams.

“I told our son Brian, who runs a minor league baseball team in Asheville, North Carolina, I said a month ago, ‘If we're playing ball in July, we'll be lucky,’” DeWine said. “But I don't know. I don't think anybody knows.

“I would say that as you look at any kind of coming back that large gatherings of people are gonna be the last thing that we check off the box and say, ‘OK, we should be doing that.’ And I think that it's not going to be what the states do only, it's going to be what fans think is same ... and so that is our challenge and the states' challenge is to do everything we can possible to make people feel safe.”

Last week, OSU president Michael Drake foreshadowed DeWine's assessment that the college football season will look different this fall, but did not predict any specific changes.

Do you believe the Buckeyes will play Sept. 5 against Bowling Green? Do you think they will play at all in 2020? Leave your comment in the section below.

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