Big 12 preparing for Pac-12 to be first Power 5 conference to cancel football season
Multiple Big 12 athletic directors say they are preparing for the Pac-12 to cancel its fall sports seasons sometime this week.
The expectation is medical experts will advise the conference not to play. If the league follows that advice, the Pac-12 will be the first Power 5 conference to cancel the football season.
According to a report by ESPN, the presidents of the schools in the Big Ten would vote to postpone the season and move it to the spring. What appeared unfathomable in March now feels inevitable in August: There will be no major college football in the fall of 2020.
The Mid-American Conference announced on Aug. 8 that it was canceling its football season. All of the NCAA’s Division II and III schools have canceled their fall championships.
There is frustration among college athletic officials that some of these cancellations are being made prematurely, that more of an effort should be made to figure out how to salvage a season.
The potential cancellation by the Pac-12, or Big Ten, doesn’t mean the Big 12, ACC, SEC, Mountain West, American Athletic Conference, etc., will immediately stop, but it is unlikely only a fraction of college football’s power teams would move forward alone.
TCU did not practice on Sunday. Instead, its players gathered in the parking lot at Amon G. Carter Stadium for In-and-Out burgers. The team’s next scheduled practice is Tuesday, and the Horned Frogs are still set to play on Sept. 12 in the season opener, although they still do not know who they would be facing. (Their season opener that was to be at Cal on Sept. 5 was called off on July 10 when the Pac-12 said it would play a conference-only schedule.)
In West Texas on Sunday, UTEP announced it has postponed the start of its fall practices after four members of the team tested positive for COVID.
Who is driving college football cancellations
The presidents of America’s biggest football program schools will decide if college football plays in 2020.
Not college athletic directors. Not conference commissioners. Not TV executives.
With their respective schools looking at losses of tens of millions of dollars, canceling football is not like scratching the English department for a semester.
The fear is that if one player, or coach, dies from contracting COVID-19, it’s not only potential litigation. It’s that the decision to play football during the time of the coronavirus cost a person their life.
College officials are also now concerned about a new development from COVID, which is its potential effects on the heart, even for patients who have recovered.
Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez is out for the season after he reportedly contracted myocarditis as a result of his experience with COVID.
Myocarditis is typically caused by viral infection, and it can potentially weaken the heart and lead to heart failure.
Rodriguez, 27, came down with COVID during MLB’s summer camp. He has no history of heart disease.
A testing problem
The college football programs that are preparing for a season are all routinely testing their players, coaches and staff members.
What the University of Alabama, Clemson, Texas, Oklahoma can afford to do in regard to testing far exceeds what other places might be able to do.
No surprise, it comes down to money. The bigger programs can afford more extensive procedures while the smaller athletic departments cannot.
The growing consensus, at least among Big 12 athletic administrators, is that without some sort of vaccine to combat the coronavirus there is no “safe” way to play and move forward.
And unlike the NBA or NHL, which are both continuing their 2019-20 seasons in their respective bubbles, college football has no possibility of setting up that sort of arrangement.
Then there is NIL and empowerment
Individually, managing a college athletic department in the time of the coronavirus is miserable for administrators.
Now add in two other elements: the NCAA’s fight against the Name, Image and Likeness lawsuit, and the increasing empowerment of student athletes through social media.
Student athletes profiting from their “NIL” is inevitable, but the specifics are loaded with legal questions, and problems.
In recent months, student athletes have gone around the chain of command and taken to social media to pressure their schools for reform.
Student athletes from the Pac-12 went to social media with a hashtag of #WeAreUnited to call for safety measures and protocols, and protections from losing their scholarships if they opt not to play the season.
The group threatened to not play the season if their demands were denied. A similar statement came from the players of the Big Ten conference and Mountain West Conference.
The university presidents would not sacrifice a season to quash this movement. This would be akin to finding a $100 bill in a house after it was leveled by a hurricane.
Sports writers want college football canceled
This increasingly popular lazy, moronic trope is that these cancellations are driven by my colleagues in the media who cover college football.
Believe in alien abduction before you believe this. On behalf of everyone who covers college football for fun, or a check, we don’t want cancellation to be reality.
The players want to play. The coaches want to coach. Those who cover it want to cover the games and players, not cancellations. The fans want to watch.
The problem is the same: The people in college athletics are all telling us all the same thing. And none of it is encouraging.
This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 6:31 PM.
