While the sports world was on pause, one popular debate amongst sports media and sports talk radio was whether or not asterisks should be put on championships that are played in bubbles or have seasons shortened due to COVID-19. In college football, only three of the five power conferences are in action as of right now, but it seems it has a chance to change.
On College Gameday on Saturday, Pat McAfee made his first appearance of the 2020 season. In addition to the humor McAfee brings to the show as he had a TV showing an image of books behind him and wearing shorts with a suit jacket, Kirk Herbstreit asked the former NFL punter whether or not an asterisk should be placed on this season.
McAfee believes that everything will have an asterisk on it in 2020 and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
“An asterisk is hey, look at the bottom of this page because we are going to further detail what has happened here. If at the asterisk, you look at the bottom of the page and it says, listen, in 2020 there was a worldwide pandemic, the sport stopped completely, teams had no idea whether or not they were going to play just months before the season started.
“Although there will be an asterisk like everything else in 2020, I think that asterisk will actually lead to people having a lot more respect and appreciation for the players, coaches, athletic trainers, equipment staff, everyone involved buying in and getting a season off the ground to begin with.”
McAfee also offered a players’ perspective on the question. He imagined a scenario where players were given championship rings with asterisks on them.
“If I got a national championship ring and it had an asterisk on it, a big ass asterisk on it, I would wear that thing anywhere and I would not give a single damn about it.”
For the sake of this argument, it was interesting to see McAfee take a different approach with the asterisk. Most of the time, you see it as a negative association that the title would not have the same meaning as any other year. However, McAfee completely dismissed the need for a symbol like an asterisk to mean anything.
