If it’s unexpected, given the state of the game in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Tuesday’s Announcements of Big Ten and Pac-12 are one of the most amazing moments in college athletics history.
Decisions to play football in the fall can have a ripple effect on the last Power Five conferences, leading to the postponement of the entire Season of the Bowl Branch in the hope of resuming it in the spring.
As a first step, Big Ten and Pac-12 forced the rest of Power Five to temporarily address two issues that will affect next season’s overall fate:
Is it imaginable to justify the festival when other Power Five leagues have made the decision to play at the table at least during the winter?
And can 3 or even two leagues compete as independent organizations all the pieces that accompany a general season, up to the school football playoffs and adding up?
Even if they’re willing to forget about the purpose of moving on while the other meetings stop, Power Five members who continue with a changed season would do so in the face of the same medical conditions that motivated Tuesday’s decisions.
The Big Ten chose in early July to eliminate games outside the conference to provide flexibility in making plans and slightly minimizing COVID-19-related hazards. This replacement was temporarily reflected through the Pac-12, a long league along with the Big Ten, followed by the CCA, Big 12 and SEC, the ACC and The Big 12 allowed members to play an unmarried game without conferences under certain limits. . Training
As a decision, schedule adjustments achieved a key goal: to save time and flexibility when convention managers and medical advisors weighed the characteristics of managing health and protection issues. Meanwhile, two Group of Five conventions, MAC and Mountain West, have opted to cancel the season.
A vital fear that evolved over the next few weeks was the development of awareness of possible long-term fitness disorders that could occur in students-athletes who could differently avoid the main symptoms of coronavirus, adding myocarditis, an inflammation of the central muscle. that may be the center’s ability to pump blood normally.
An organization responsible for providing recommendations on medical issues, the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health and Welfare Initiative, has come to the assessment that the prevalence of COVID-19 “remains very high in much of Pac-12’s footprint and travels to many places. it’s probably dangerous, especially in advertising planes ‘and not’ to have contact interaction or festival activities.’
“We are involved in the physical fitness results similar to the virus,” the organization said. “Among them, there is new and evolving data related to possible serious effects on the cardiac aspect in elite athletes. We don’t have enough data to perceive the short- and long-term effects of these fitness problems.”
The SEC will remain patient, Commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday. In a series of tweets, Sankey said the convention “has been planned in each and every step since March,” and mentioned as an example the resolution of moving the start of the normal season to the end of September.
“We know the considerations remain,” Sankey said. “Can we play? I don’t know. We haven’t stopped trying. We support, teach and care for students-athletes every day, and we will continue to do soArray … every day.”
If medical disorders prompted the Big Ten and Pac-12, for other Power Five leagues to play in the same uncertainty, it would have to be accepted that the well-being of students’ fitness can be just the guarantee of harming the competition.
Players and coaches seem to be in a position to take a chance. Over the next week, several of the biggest names in school football have expressed a willingness to settle for that risk, adding Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields. At the same time, coaches such as Jim Harbaugh of Michigan issued statements calling for the game to continue as scheduled in September.
Nebraska coach Scott Frost, a passionate game advocate this fall, said Monday that players would have a lower threat of coronavirus if they stayed on campus and within the limits of the football program.
“I’m passionate about our boys playing,” he said.
“If I had a son, I’d need it to play football. I think this is the safest position it can be, and many schools around the convention probably think the same way, that the safest environment in which we can position those guys are an environment in which they are constantly monitored, examined, cared for, in case of illness.”
However, the selection does not belong to the players and coaches, but to the rectors of the universities that represent the other Power Five conferences. While acknowledging the monetary risks of not fighting a season, those directors would possibly find themselves unable to justify how school football and COVID-19 can coexist safely.