Rick Pitino advocating for delayed and reduced college basketball season

Rick Pitino believes college basketball should delay next season.

While the major professional sports are plotting returns to the field, college sports have remained mostly silent. Several programs have started football practices only to see large numbers of athletes test positive for the coronavirus.

College basketball, which typically starts in November and was the first sport significantly impacted by the pandemic with the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, is currently slated to begin its season as planned. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the virus with cases spiking across the country, so Pitino, the new head coach at Iona, has a solution of his own.

Pitino wants a reduced season and one that will begin later.

On its face, this move makes a lot of sense. Delaying the season until January would buy more time for a vaccine to be developed and potentially allow college basketball to avoid the feared second wave that could come with the arrival of flu season in the fall.

Playing only conference games would also cut back on travel, which would save valuable money for athletics departments in the midst of an uncertain financial landscape. The reduced travel would also decrease the risk of spread from the coronavirus since the pool of players and coaches interacting with each other would be diminished considerably.

The sport would still take a financial hit with profitable non-conference events like the Maui Invitational, the Champions Classic and Big Ten-ACC Challenge getting wiped out for a year. Those losses could be somewhat offset if a vaccine is developed, which would make it more possible to allow fans into the stands to generate more revenue.

The other big takeaway here is that Pitino’s concern about the health and safety of his players is very important. The coronavirus is raging through most of the country with nearly 40 states reporting increased case totals.

Trying to conduct a normal non-conference season, where teams fly all across the country or globe to play games, doesn’t make sense when the financial gains would be minimal without fans and the risk to the athletes would be significantly higher. Setting a target date of January for a conference season would allow campuses time to get ready to safely host events and potentially do so in an environment where the coronavirus threat may be less than it is now.

There would be ramifications to how the NCAA Tournament is selected since non-conference scheduling would be a factor in most years, but at this point simply having a tournament would be a win for the NCAA.

For more NCAA basketball news, analysis, opinion and features, check out more from the FanSided college basketball section to stay on top of the latest action.