Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. As the off-season rolls on, uncertainty about the future reigns, with a mix of hopeful and ominous factors showing up along the way.
We begin by looking at how college campuses will look in the fall and how that will affect college sports, including basketball. Notably, Cal State Fullerton recently announced that they will not have in-person classes in the fall, a big development as schools like Stanford and Boston University openly consider similar measures.
Another complicating factor: will colleges even be open? Football will face all of these questions first, and as friend and colleague Pete Thamel gets into, there are more questions than answers right now. Meetings are being held to determine how to proceed, and basketball is being discussed as well since it will be affected by whatever happens with football as well.
We then get into an issue this situation is exacerbating: the divide between the haves and have-nots in college sports. Top talents skipping college will not kill the sport, but we could certainly see some attrition in the Division I ranks in due time as a consequence of this. That would greatly change the fabric of the game, and we also get into one story that tells a little of why the payout was so reduced this year – an insurance policy that was reduced and a cash reserve that was mostly depleted.
In our closing portion, we talk about transfers as they continue to happen. The number is now approaching 750 and still climbing.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to tune in again soon as we talk more about college basketball.
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