Here’s how we envision the Big 12 going about its football schedule in 2020
The Big 12 could finally have plans for a football schedule finalized Monday.
The conference’s board of directors is scheduled to meet Monday afternoon with the pressing topic being the league’s upcoming football season. As of now, seemingly everything is still on the table.
Options are expected to include going ahead with a 12-game season, starting as early as Week Zero on Aug. 29, to a nine-game conference-only schedule. Something in between those two seems most likely.
Since the Big 12 and commissioner Bob Bowlsby have yet to make a decision, the Star-Telegram went ahead and answered the pressing questions. Here’s our best guess as to how the upcoming season will look:
▪ Conference-only plus one or two nonconference opponents at home. This would align the Big 12 with other Power Five conferences (SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12) with at least 10 games and possibly 11 (ACC). The league should not want to do a conference-only schedule with nine games and possibly be at a disadvantage for the College Football Playoff.
By doing home games, it would reduce travel and possible exposure to different parts of the country. Of course, there is no full-proof method to prevent the virus from spreading but travel has been discouraged.
▪ Start date of Sept. 12 at earliest. As of now, there are schools such as TCU, Oklahoma and Kansas preparing for a possible Week Zero game on Aug. 29. With the SEC and Pac-12 starting on Sept. 26, it’s hard to envision the Big 12 starting almost a full month before. Those optics would not look good.
Plus, by delaying the start of the season, college football could benefit by seeing how the NFL is going about its business. However, as one college official put it, “I think we’ll learn more from contact practice than we will from the pro leagues.”
At the end of the day, a Sept. 12 start would still give schools 14 weeks to play the schedule — whether it’s 10, 11 or 12 games — with the conference championship moved back to Dec. 19. That’s the same date for the SEC and Pac-12 championships.
