| NEWS The Machinery Is in Motion to Postpone the 2020 College Football Season - CalBearsMaven

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After an arduous summer of trying to push the 2020 college football season through a pandemic and toward kickoff, conference leaders abruptly hit the brakes on a chaotic Saturday that felt like the beginning of the end.

First, the Mid-American Conference announced that its presidents unanimously voted to postpone fall sports until the spring. That was the first FBS league to take such a step, and it puts the other nine in a precarious position trying to justify playing. “There are simply too many unknowns to put our student athletes in these situations,” commissioner John Steinbrecher said. “This is simply a miserable decision. I am heartbroken we are in this place.”

Then, the Big Ten released a statement saying that it has halted progress toward full-contact practice. From the statement: “We believe it is best to continue in the appropriate phase of activity referenced above while we digest and share information from each campus to ensure we are moving forward cautiously.” The conference had a regularly scheduled presidents meeting Saturday, with rumors percolating nationally that the wealthiest conference is considering postponing fall sports as well. A Detroit Free Press report Saturday cited league sources saying commissioner Kevin Warren is in favor of a spring football season.

Later, a prominent industry source opined to Sports Illustrated: “I think by the end of the week the fall sports will be postponed in all conferences.”

The news whiplash was jarring. Just Friday, the Southeastern Conference announced every member’s opponents for a 10-game season. Earlier in the week, the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference released full schedules. Kickoff for the Big Ten was set for Sept. 3, and the ACC for Sept. 10.

Now? Many people around the sport are bracing for a decision that would be devastating both culturally and financially—a national postponement to spring, at best.

What happened? The closer we got to kickoff, the more misgivings have mounted. There was never a unified belief at the FBS level about how to proceed, and those fissures have become more clear as time went by and the data did not alleviate concerns.

“Almost everything would have to be perfectly aligned to continue moving forward,” NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline said Friday night on the association’s weekly Social Series.

Not much has aligned in recent weeks. From a national health perspective: COVID-19 infections soared through July, and deaths have correspondingly risen during August. From a local campus perspective: Colleges have been faced with the reality of trying to curtail athlete outbreaks in a non-bubble setting, while bracing for the return of the full student body en masse. Then there have been individual athlete testimonials about lingering effects of the disease, including heart issues; the large-scale player movements within conferences that articulate their health concerns; and the dozens of players opting out of the season.

As one Power 5 source put it: ”I think the commissioners, presidents and ADs have just started looking around and asking, 'What are we doing?’ ”

The answer, now, is pausing. And in some cases backtracking. And perhaps ultimately a full stop.

It would be somewhat ironic if the multi-billion-dollar college football industry was felled by the MAC, which would rank either ninth or 10th in a hierarchy of the 10-conference FBS. Even more specifically, it could be Northern Illinois—coming off a 5-7 2019 season—that ultimately pushed the first domino.

Sources told SI Friday that NIU was the school advocating hardest for a fall postponement, and that it was likely the Huskies simply would not play in the fall even if the league voted to proceed with the season. Ultimately, the vote went the other way.

“The science told us what we need to do,” a MAC source said. “Health and safety was our primary concern, and not other factors.”

But there is an alternate viewpoint regarding the MAC decision: that it saw which direction Big Ten leaders were contemplating going and simply decided to go there first.

"My theory is they know what the Big Ten is going to do,” said one administrator from a Group of 5 conference. “I think the Pac-12 is ready to go as well and everyone else follows suit.”

SI confirmed that Pac-12 presidents have a previously scheduled meeting Tuesday. The Pac-12 has been more closely aligned with the Big Ten than any other league, following the Big Ten’s decision to play a conference-only schedule with their own identical decision a day later.

If the Big Ten or Pac-12 (or both) bail on the season, it would be a virtual impossibility for the rest of the FBS conferences to continue. "I think it looks too bad,” an SEC source told SI. “I don’t think you can. What do you accomplish? How do you win a national championship?”

Thus the next few days could see a succession of announcements that bring the season to a halt, with the vague hope of starting over in the spring. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on ESPN radio Saturday cited the events of March 12, when each conference independently but unanimously shut down their basketball tournaments.

“That’s an indicator of the future, but not guarantee,” Sankey said. “I can’t provide certainty but I can provide clarity.”

Over the past five months, since the shutdown of March Madness and all spring sports, college administrators have sought ways to avoid their worst-case scenario: losing the football season. Hopes rose and fell over the course of the summer, depending largely upon the nation’s ability (or failure) to combat the virus.

Even when things looked bleakest, in July, the sport stayed determined to try to carry on. That’s because the alternative is too painful: the loss of tens of millions of dollars in revenue, a financial catastrophe that could lead to wholesale cutting of Olympic sports, athletic scholarships and jobs.

Way back in April, a Power 5 athletic director put the specter of a fall without football in perspective: “We’re all f---ed. There’s no other way to look at this, is there?”

But the financial imperative to play has, in August, run into the hard reality of where the nation and higher education stand in dealing with the pandemic. After failing to win the summer, we are on the brink of losing the fall.
 
Financially, it probably makes more sense at this point to not play.
Not sure how you make that math add up. If they do have some fans attend there will be some money coming to Tuscaloosa. I also think the TV viewers could be record highs since more people will be home to watch. People are hungry for something other than political bickering and talking about the pandemic and rioting mess.
 
Not sure how you make that math add up. If they do have some fans attend there will be some money coming to Tuscaloosa. I also think the TV viewers could be record highs since more people will be home to watch. People are hungry for something other than political bickering and talking about the pandemic and rioting mess.

Because I believe it will wind up with no fans in many places. That will kill it. All it takes is one state included in a conference to do so in order to make conference play hard.
 
How can high school or pro football happen?

This is all interdependent.

Maybe they outsmarted us by hinting at football being canceled to stir up the players that want to play considering all the other stuff going on.
 
It’s not happening. They already know it. At this point, it makes more sense to try for spring but any contact sport outside of a bubble has no shot until there’s a vaccine.
 
True @OldPlayer ......
Than the boys that wanna play college football......play...
The boys that consider it a risk.....watch....
Theres a lot that just love to play the game...!!!
Would affect most every team.....not equally....but some
B,e like the new "play or sit" attitude in bowls these days....
 
shift to the spring as plan B.
I've yet to see anyone tell me how that would work.

NFL draft.
NFL combine.
Spring camp.
Early enrollees and the 85 cap.

You know, if we saw a guy have an ACL injury in say May of the spring season he'd end up missing two years with fall 2021 starting six/seven weeks after the last game of the spring season.
 
any contact sport outside of a bubble
So if that would work why isn't that an option? I suspect kids would give that a try before cancelling he season. Try it do not throw the towel in w/o exploring every option to play.

@TerryP No idea how the logistics of a spring season would work. Seems to be what everyone is throwing out as if it is the solution so I was assuming someone had thought how this would work. That could be code for lets just solve today's problem, that will be tomorrows problem.
 
That's the problem, the interdepency between high school, college, and NFL. You can't have one moving forward with the others without the impact to an entire class or TWO.

I believe the FCS is already committed to spring, along with the other smaller divisions.
 
I believe the FCS is already committed to spring, along with the other smaller divisions.
I don't see the impact as large in the FCS as it is in FBS (except for school's revenue being decreased for they paid games.) As example, there were six FCS players drafted in the 2020 draft. If we see the same number in the next class we should see more than a dozen, perhaps, opt out of playing.

Without their fall resumes, do we see as many as six drafted, or less?
I used the dozen figure earlier because there were 12, of the 330+ prospects, who received an combine invitation. Would that number increase, or decrease? Would an NFL GM use junior season tape to determine if a FCS linebacker is as good as a FBS linebacker in terms of the invitations? Especially if that FBS 'backer plays in the fall?
 
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