Blowin' Smoke Presented by Weston Tobacco

What's more fun than us giving you a chance to mock us every single week? In our new feature, Blowin' Smoke presented by Weston Tobacco, we will do that each and every Thursday. Gabe DeArmond and Mitchell Forde will make five predictions almost sure to go wrong every week in this space. These will range from big games to big picture predictions with a bit of the comedic and absurd mixed in most weeks as well.

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Mitchell: I knew we were getting something Mahomes related in here. I'll probably be a subsistence farmer and fisherman living in a yurt in the Mongolian wilderness so I don't have to listen to people argue about the coronavirus or hear from Chiefs fans ever again.

Gabe: Mahomes? Did my question mention him? I just asked about 2031. I'm curious. I mean, I'll be watching the Chiefs win their ninth Super Bowl that year with the same quarterback. Oh, that is Mahomes. Now I see how you made that leap. Maybe I was just curious about your future plans. And maybe if you don't want to talk about the Chiefs you should come up with the questions.

Gabe: I don't see how we have it on September 5th. That's a little over eight weeks from now. Workouts are supposed to start next week and camps is supposed to open in 29 days and there are places where people aren't even allowed to lift weights and we are no closer to anybody having a plan or a decision than we were four months ago. As I wrote on Monday, for a long time the talk is that it was early and nobody had to make any decisions yet. Well, it ain't early anymore.

Mitchell: Generally speaking, I'm done trying to predict what is going to happen with college football this fall. Here we are almost four months after college sports shut down and it feels like we have less clarity than ever not just about what's going to happen but what should happen — how risky it is to have a season versus the financial impact of not doing so. However, I recognize that doesn't really work as an answer in a feature in which we predict things. Right now, I'm leaning towards no, Missouri does not play Sept. 5. Some teams might. But I have a hard time seeing a world in which all 12 games happen this season, and if you're eliminating games, a meaningless matchup against an FCS school would seem like the logical place to start.

Mitchell: I still think so. As we've said before, athletics departments have to try to play football this season. If they don't, a ton of people are going to lose their jobs and some might have to stop sponsoring scholarships, at least for a while. I still feel like the best bet is to push on in the fall, maybe with a shortened or conference-only season. Establish going in that teams have to test at least weekly, that players who test positive quarantine for however long people need to quarantine these days, and that it's not going to be a level playing field for every team. Given that we're still just as uncertain about football being played in the fall as we were four months ago, I just don't think it's likely that we figure it out by February or March, and there are a lot of challenges to trying to play in the spring, most notably how TV contracts would work and whether players who have any hope of being drafted would play.

Gabe: I'm a hard maybe on this one. But 2020 the calendar year, I'm leaning no. I think we're going to end up with football in the spring. I think it's possible we see some 2020 football like conference only schedules. We certainly won't see a normal season. Maybe the SEC plays. Maybe all the power conferences go conference only games and they cobble together some sort of a four or eight team playoff. But if I had to put money on it today, I'd put my money on spring football.

Gabe: I would think you've got to have some sort of plan by August 1. Now, if you just announce no fans on August 1, maybe that gives you a little bit of leeway to figure out the rest and you don't have to absolutely drop dead have details for another week or two, but one way or another, we're getting close to that time. Fall camp is supposed to open on August 7. How do you open fall camp without knowing what the season looks like?

Mitchell: We're getting pretty close to that point, I think. August 1 sounds about right to me. Certainly the season could always get curtailed after that point, but there needs to be a date where conferences say "okay, we're playing, this is how the schedule is being modified, this is how many people are allowed in the stands, plan accordingly." Because even if they do play in the fall, there's still a lot of logistical questions, ranging from how travel works to how interviews work to deciding who gets into the stadiums. I would think schools need about a month to get that all ironed out.

Mitchell: I don't even know how many digits are in a Powerball number. I feel confident this isn't right, but I'll say 17.

Gabe: Your confidence was well founded. You're gonna need more numbers. I hope I can find someone who can tell me so I can buy a private island and fly to it for the rest of 2020.