The Big Ten and Pac-12 will not play football this fall due to considerations of COVID-19, two of the five school football strength meetings of a season crumbling amid the pandemic.
About an hour after the Announcement of the Big Ten, the Pac-12 convened a press convention to say its season would be postponed until spring.
The Announcement of the Big Ten comes six days after the convention, which includes older systems such as the state of Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska, and Penn State, posted a revised football schedule only for the convention that I hoped would allow it to sail an fall season with potential disruptions. COVID-19.
Instead, the entire fall of the Big Ten has been cancelled and a spring season will be explored.
The resolution was monumental but not a surprise. Speculation that the Big Ten is heading towards this resolution has abounded for several days. On Monday, convention coaches tried to push the tide back, publicly begging for longer and threatening to look the other way for this fall’s games.
“The physical and intellectual fitness and well-being of our student-athletes has been in the midst of all the decisions we’ve made regarding the ability to move forward,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement. “Over time and after hours of discussion with our Working Group of the Big Ten on Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it has become very transparent that there is too much uncertainty about the potential medical dangers to allow our student-athletes to participate in this competition. fall.”
Warren succeeded Jim Delany as Commissioner this year. Warren, a former NFL executive for a long time, has entered an unprecedented challenge for school sports.
In an interview on Big Ten Network, Warren lobbied to see if the resolution was unanimous at all meetings and whether Big Ten groups can still go to play one fall season, as some coaches advised on Monday.
Warren refused to answer.
“We are very disappointed with the Big Ten Conference resolution to postpone the fall football season because we have been and are still in a position to play,” University of Nebraska officials said in a statement.
Ohio state athletic director Gene Smith said the Buckeyes would have to play.
“I had a little more time to evaluate,” Smith told Big Ten Network.
Over the next month, meetings have changed schedules in the hope of saving time and betting a season. The Big Ten were the first to attend the convention alone, and they did so in early July.
The Pac-12 followed two days later and, despite everything, all Power Five meetings moved on to all meetings or mainly.
The first FBS convention to end the fall season was the Mid-American Conference on Saturday, and then Mountain West did the same on Monday.
But those meetings do not have the income, scope and history of the Big Ten, who seemed set to devote resources to finding their athletes from the gain and dissemination of COVID-19.
The Big Ten is presented as the oldest university sports convention in the country, dating back to 1896, when the Western Conference was convened, and its schools have been playing football ever since. It has become the Big Ten in 1918 and has become a football powerhouse.
The 14 Big Ten schools extend from Maryland and Rutgers on the east coast to Iowa and Nebraska to the west. Not only has it been one of the most successful meetings on the ground, but, as a factory, it has one of the richest.
The Big Ten, with its lucrative television network, distributes about $50 million a year to its members.
Pac-12 is found in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
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