Kansas State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor thinks big football programs can survive a season without fans attending games.
Right now, nobody knows if fans will be allowed to attend games this upcoming college football season because of the coronavirus pandemic. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
View this post on Instagram
Taylor thinks teams with lucrative TV contracts will survive even if fans are banned. He told Paul Finebaum during a Tuesday afternoon interview that the TV money would let programs pay the bills for a season.
It’s not clear if they could do it past 2020 and remain financially stable.
Kansas State AD Gene Taylor (@KSTATEADGT) tells us if a football season is played without fans, the television revenue alone would be enough for programs to stay afloat financially until the following year.
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 19, 2020
Would you look at that, folks? I’ve been saying this since March, and now one of the most notable ADs in America is saying the same.
Let me be crystal clear here. Teams like Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin can survive on TV money for the upcoming year.
View this post on Instagram
The Big 10, SEC, ACC and Big 12 print TV money. There will be enough to pay the bills in the short term.
After that, it’s going to get dicey if fans are banned for future seasons.
View this post on Instagram
On top of that, smaller programs don’t have fat TV contracts. That means they have to rely on ticket sales to earn money.
If fans are banned, they’re the programs that could be screwed this upcoming season.
We’ll see what happens, but this is at least a reason to be slightly optimistic. It won’t fix anything in the long term, but it will get big programs through 2020.