The dashboards that post positive COVID-19 test numbers are the new scoreboards for the future of college football. The D1 Ticker, the indispensable daily email that tracks college athletics, reads these days like a college police blotter: “Holy Cross police busted a large off-campus apartment party,” it read over the weekend.
And the news that’s trickling in around the country hints at a tension virtually unimaginable for the first 150 years of college football. For generations, student support has been the rollicking lifeblood of college football. The student section has served as the teeming, visceral, and palpable energy behind programs.