Big Ten to play only in league

The Big Ten Conference’s fall sports teams will play only within the league, a decision that will affect football, men’s and women’s cross-country, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, and women’s volleyball — assuming public health officials advise playing at all amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In an interview Thursday, Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner, said the decision would give the league the greatest flexibility and allow it to “make quick decisions in real time based on the most current medical advice.”

But Warren, who became commissioner in January, stopped short of promising that even the conference’s latest plan would be permanent and emphasized that he and other officials were “leaning on our medical experts.”

“We’re in a perpetual state of fluidity right now in dealing with all of these issues,” Warren said. “We’re taking it one step at a time, and we’re also prepared not to play the season if circumstances dictate.”

Big Ten officials began to coalesce around the strategy over the last month, and although Warren declined to speculate how other influential Power Five leagues, like the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences, would respond to the decision, he expected to brief other college sports leaders Friday.

“This announcement represents a step — a very important step — that will help provide consistency, clarity and some control over the situation,” said Sandy Barbour, athletic director at Penn State, who added that she was “optimistic about our ability to play sports this fall and in the 2020-21 academic year.”

The decision by the Big Ten, one of the so-called Power Five conferences, will reverberate throughout football. The league’s teams were scheduled to play some of the most anticipated nonconference games of the season, including Ohio State at Oregon on Sept. 12, and Michigan at Washington on Sept. 5. The move will prompt other conferences to rethink their schedules and consider their approaches to a season that executives have increasingly acknowledged will be like none other in the sport’s history.

Last month, the Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner, John Swofford, said if Power Five schools exclusively played conference games, the ACC would aid Notre Dame, which is not in a conference for football, with participating in the league’s games. The ACC also announced Thursday that it would delay all of its Olympic sports competitions until at least Sept. 1.

The Big Ten’s decision would place greater financial pressure on its athletic departments, which were cutting budgets and trimming salaries even before Thursday’s announcement.

All ongoing summer sports activities would remain voluntary, the conference said. Athletes who opt out of the upcoming season because of coronavirus concerns will still receive their scholarships for the year.

The conference’s decision followed a handful of collegiate athletic cuts made as schools faced budget concerns heightened by the pandemic. Dartmouth dropped five teams Thursday, and Stanford cut 11 sports the day before.