AMES, the. – The conference-free football game recently announced across the state of Iowa opposite Ball State on September 12 only represents programming on the go, but also offers a coronavirus-induced preview in what may be an original formula of non-conference sports occasion contracts.
For example, five times in the three-page contract, the word “COVID-19” is mentioned. The word COVID is unlikely to have been used in a sports contract before this fatal pandemic hit last March.
And then the show: members of the Spiritual Team, The Dance Team, the Pet and the Ball State Band will not be able to enter Jack Trice Stadium, due to the “COVID-19 game management protocols of the Big 12 Conference for visiting teams.”
The last maximum addition to the Iowa State 12-game calendar by 2020 also includes the word Force Majeure, a safeguard clause if the game is not played due to an “event beyond moderate group control” and cannot have been avoided. away from the party. due diligence:
Prevents the festival from being installed on the scheduled date and time.
Prevents the contest site.
Prevents a (team) from aligning a sufficient number of players or position players to participate in the competition, or
It jeopardizes the fitness or protection of team members, facility employees, festival officials or spectators or festival holidays. »
The contract also puts an exclamation point on what the 12 Big 12 directors have been saying for some time: that their Plan A remains a regular 12-game program. They have a soup of letters from Planes B, C, D and so on, if their plan goes wrong.
Oklahoma, for example, moves its opening until August 29 against the state of Missouri. The game was originally scheduled for September 5. Moving it for a week, which the NCAA has allowed everyone to do, gives the Sooners an additional week to compensate for the potential disruption caused by COVID.
The only access to the regime in the contract between the Big 12 and Mid-American convention groups is that the Cyclones will pay Ball State $350,000 to update the loss of the Cy-Hawk game when the Big Ten play only convention games.
The Des Moines Register won the contract through the Open Records Act on Tuesday afternoon. The document, signed on July 27, is full of ordinary details, such as that the state of Iowa agreed to host Ball State in a men’s basketball game during the 2021-22 or 2022-23 educational year, with the indictment of the game “proportional”. at the market rate for games guaranteed at the time it is played.”
As for the fear of Power Five systems against the parties to the conflict who verify COVID in the same way, this contract is also responsible for this. It states that players in either group must adhere to NCAA COVID-19 verification protocols.
A contract with Ball State approximately seven weeks before the game for $350,000 is a smart deal, given that Michigan paid the Cardinals $975,000 for a game on September 12. Indiana paid them $700,000 for their September 19 game. Both were lost when the Big Ten moved on to conference scheduling.
Another MAC school, Bowling Green, lost a total of $2.2 million in games canceled through the Big Ten, unlike the state of Ohio and Illinois.
Meanwhile, the state of Iowa now has a 12-game calendar that includes the first 4 house games and 8 house games in total.
Iowa state columnist Randy Peterson has been writing for the Des Moines Register for six decades. Contact him at [email protected], 515-284-8132 and on Twitter at @RandyPete. No one covers cyclones like the record. Your subscription makes these paintings possible. Subscribe to DesMoinesRegister.com/Deal