Thad Speaks: Thaddeus Matula on COVID-19 and college football

Thaddeus D. Matula is no stranger among SMU circles. An Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director, Matula is responsible for directing the highly successful ESPN documentary "Pony Excess," which focused on the death penalty in the 1980s.

Matula is a fan of all things SMU, and he took time out of his busy schedule to speak with The HillTopics for a five-part extended question-and-answer session.

TODAY'S QUESTION:

COVID-19 has messed up a ton of plans. As we continue through summer, do you think we'll see college football? And why?

Live a life of intent, my friend, and you will live a happy life. Live a life of expectation, and you will find bitterness and resentment. I intend to root like hell the next time my Ponies are on the field.

But you wanted my prediction. We'll see college football. But not in the fall. Unless the football players are the only ones on campus and everyone else is distance learning.

Look, we've had the Ivy League and now the Patriot League say uncle to fall sports. The NHL? They went to Canada. MLS had a rocky start; they may be settling into something. I think the NBA has a shot, but they are able to go to extraordinary lengths because they have both the money and the roster sizes to do it. Frankly they could probably put the whole league in one of those late '80s-early '90s biospheres.

Sounds like the start of a great pitch for a truly bad reality show.

Obviously you can discount California based on different political realities, but frankly, I think the gig is up for the fall sports most anywhere, with LA and San Diego school districts coming out and saying they will begin school online only in the fall. New York shows that you can get things under control here, but you have to have some real buy-in.

We haven't had it in the rest of the country. And the most football-mad places have had some of the least buy-in.

Look at Mississippi. Now they have bought it, but not before they got their state legislature infected by insisting on having an in-person legislative session with few masks and less social distancing.

BUT ... it's not all doom and gloom, people! With so much pointing now to a vaccine by Thanksgiving, I bet we'll start to hear January proposals over the next couple weeks. Then when it comes time for rubber to hit the road, we'll see schools delay the semester or opt for all online classes with reopening in January. And sports will be pushed.

But hey, I'm a long-suffering SMU fan ... so I somehow manage ridiculous levels of hope in the face of overwhelming odds. So yeah, I do have hope we'll be tossing the pigskin in the fall.