Alabama Football: The one word to describe the 2020 football season

One word can describe the 2020 Alabama football season.

The 2020 college football season will begin this Saturday. Even with football right around the corner, we only received the Alabama football schedule a few weeks ago. There is only one word that can accurately describe this year, and that word is uncertain.

There is uncertainty in everything that happens in 2020, and college is no different. We’ll get to the uncertainty on the field in a moment, but let’s start with the uncertainty of college students. After all, a student-athlete is supposed to be a student first.

There are some in-person classes at the University of Alabama, but a rise in positive cases puts the academic year into question. Students aren’t sure when or if the 2020 fall semester will go completely virtual, and that has an impact on UA’s morale. Some students have been forced to move out of their residence halls with only 24-hour notice. Those actions cause uncertainty for all UA students, including athletes.

We don’t know how a virtual semester will impact a college football season. All we know is that UA is doing everything they can to have some sort of an Alabama football season.

There is uncertainty about the college football season itself.

Let’s assume that every game of the 2020 college football season is played. That is a dangerous assumption, but bear with me. Even with that, we don’t know how the College Football Playoff committee will determine the four best teams for the CFP. Heck, we’re not even totally certain that we will have a College Football Playoff.

We also don’t know what to expect if a player tests positive during the season. Will they cancel the game? Will the athlete be out for two weeks? Can potentially canceled games be made up at any point? We still have dozens of questions, and the answer continues to be that we just don’t know.

2020 is the year of uncertainty. Since sports are a microcosm of society, that uncertainty seeps through to world of Alabama football. I wish I had the answers, but we will just have to wait and see.