With the changes in the world, I've found that I have a LOT more time for virtual endeavors. So, I'm back to more than lurking on good old CB. I'm sheltering in place in an undisclosed European country which has been completely cut off from all forms of travel for anyone without an EU Blue Card. It's a pretty nice place with very good infrastructure and my wife and youngest daughter are with me, so we're making the best of a bad situation surrounded by beautiful Spring weather. The local ward has been very supportive and we've been fortunate to avoid any significant problems either financially or health-wise.

At the request of one of the EU commissions, I prepared a combination cybersecurity and business forecast along with some senior economists, business leaders and health professionals. Surprisingly, much of our discussions focused on EU sporting events in the briefing, so I figured I'd share here.

There were three models presented based on timing, these ranged from June, September or... May 2021. This would mean that the hard borders which currently exist (you can't move across borders without special paperwork now, very reminiscent of the Nazi and US/Russian occupations in the 1940's) would be relaxed and full freedom of movement would be restored. The fly in the ointment for any of these models was any sort of large gathering (more than 100's of people). Without a vaccine, each large gathering (think music festival or sporting event) served as a massive spike-creator of infections, and then subsequent overloading of medical capacity.

Among the folks I was collaborating with, the opinion of our small working group was that there will not be any coordinated sporting events (or other large social gathering) in the EU until there is a vaccine. Even professional sports where just the players show up, once you get support/training staff included, TV production crews, and all of the other related people involved to make a professional sporting event happen, you're into the 100's and you will see a spike in infections as a result.

If I were to extrapolate these ideas to the US market, here's what I'm seeing. The US is about 2-3 weeks behind the EU from an infection and management perspective. The US has almost 10X the population of many of EU's largest countries and there has not been as homogenous of an infection rate across the US as there has been in some regions of the EU (northern Italy for example). As the result, I'd extrapolate our model to July, October or June 2021 for the US.

So, applying this to collegiate athletics, this COVID19 event is probably going to be the death of the NCAA as we know it. No tournament revenues for 2020 or 2021. Any football program which attempts to run a 'normal' season is going to be punished from a PR perspective (and probably US government action against the institution), and because of the 'pockets' of infection in the US, there's really no way to have the travel infrastructure (even with chartered planes, etc.) to get teams to travel from one place to another.

Now, before the NCAA haters get all excited... The other major disruption we mapped in our meetings the last few days has been related to higher education. How do you run college admissions if you don't have grades or test scores? The prediction here in the EU is that most private schools (secondary and college-equivalent) will most likely fail in the coming year. This will leave the large state-run institutions. If we apply a similar level of analysis to the US, think about all of the colleges and universities which rely on an annual set of inbound captive customers. Looking at the financials for the bottom two-thirds of the WSJ college report, I would guess that half of them won't survive this downturn, resulting in a significant contraction. Now, look at the numbers when it comes to athletic programs which run at a loss from year to year and require subsidies. Do you think the professors/teachers unions are going to let millions of dollars go to the athletic programs when their jobs are on the line? Even on the current trajectory of government bail-out largesse, I don't see a way for underwater athletic programs to succeed in the next decade.

From an even more fundamental perspective, what happens when there's no ESPN to pay the billions to broadcast those games? Let's look at the supply chain disruption that's going to happen:

- NCAA (bankrupt - completely re-vamped in 2021?)
- Colleges and Universities (raw numbers reduced by 2/3)
- Athletic programs (of the surviving 1/3, maybe 1/2 will make it?)
- Sports broadcasting networks (MAYBE Amazon starts something to pick up the pieces? - but Disney/ESPN is done for as we know it)
- Viewers (30% unemployment in 2021 is the nice number in the EU even after all of the social safety nets, probably worse in the US, little disposable income to spend on sports)

I hope that I'm wrong... but we may be looking at a 5-year period which completely alters college athletics for the foreseeable future. Significantly-reduced opportunities, fundamental supply chain and consumption disruptions... we'll be telling our grandchildren about memories from yesteryear that they probably will not get to experience like we did when it comes to things that shaped our collective sports fan culture.

Trying not to get too negative, but when I walk out of a set of meetings like I just did and the most-optimistic guy in the room is dumping half of his net worth into physical gold... this may be the big one that alters the face of politics, culture, family and personal lifestyle like nothing this world has ever seen.