Canes, Gators, Noles push to play season with protocols
The Big Ten and Pac-12 announced Tuesday afternoon they will not play football — or any sports — this fall.
The Atlantic Coast Conference, however, is full throttle for now.
At least that’s what Florida Gov Ron DeSantis is hoping.
A couple hours before the monumental announcements from Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, DeSantis held a new conference Tuesday at Florida State — and made it emphatically clear, along with FSU president John Thrasher, that they want ACC football to be played this fall.
Thrasher said the other ACC presidents, including University of Miami’s Julio
Frenk, are expected to meet again this week to
ule that it hoped would help it navigate a fall season with potential COVID-19 disruptions.
The decision was monumental but not a surprise. Speculation has run rampant for several days that the Big Ten was moving toward this decision. On Monday, coaches throughout the Big Ten tried to push back the tide, publicly pleading for more time and threatening to look elsewhere for games this fall.
“The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.”
Warren took over as commissioner from Jim Delany at the start of this year. A former longtime executive in the NFL, Warren walked into an unprecedented problem for college sports.
During an interview on the Big Ten Network, Warren was pressed on whether the decision was unanimous across the conferences and if Big Ten teams could still try to play a fall season, as some coaches suggested Monday. Warren declined to answer.
“We are very disappointed in the decision by the Big Ten Conference to postpone the fall football season, as we have been and continue to be ready to play,” University of Nebraska leadership said in a statement.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said the Buckeyes would have preferred to play.
“I wish we would have had a little more time to evaluate,” Smith told the Big Ten Network.
Over the last month, conferences have been reworking schedules in the hopes of being able to buy some time and play a season. The Big Ten was the first to go to conference-only play, doing it in early July.
The Pac-12 followed two days later and eventually all the Power Five conferences switched to either all or mostly conference play.
The first Football Bowl Subdivision conference to pull the plug on a fall season was the Mid-American Conference on Saturday, and then the Mountain West did the same on Monday.
But those conferences don’t have the revenue, reach and history of the Big Ten, which seemed positioned to pour resources into trying to protect its athletes from getting and spreading COVID-19.
The Big Ten touts itself as the oldest college athletic conference in the country, dating back to 1896 when it was called the Western Conference, and its schools have been playing football ever since. It became the Big Ten in 1918 and grew into a football powerhouse.
The 14 Big Ten schools span from Maryland and Rutgers on the East Coast to Iowa and Nebraska out west. Not only has it been one of the most successful conferences on the field, but off the field it has
become one of the wealthiest.
The Big Ten, with its lucrative television network, distributes about
$50 million per year to its members.
The Pac-12’s members are in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
“My heart breaks for our players. I couldn’t be prouder of the commitment and focus they have demonstrated from the start of this pandemic,” Indiana coach Tom Allen said of the Big Ten’s decision.
“Our number one priority always has been and will continue to be the health and well-being of our players. While this is a difficult day, the decision is in the best interest of our players.”
Shelly Meyer, a nurse and wife of retired college coach Urban Meyer, tweeted that with players losing their sport, “please make sure we have outlets/resources to help them cope w this loss. And yes, it IS loss, even if u think it’s ‘just a game.’”
Many high-profile college players, including Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, have made it clear they want to play this fall.
Simply pushing college football to the spring is hardly a cut-and-dried answer. Nobody knows whether there will better treatments or even a vaccine by then. And for those players who have NFL aspirations, the prospects of risking injury by playing up until the draft almost certainly means many high-profile stars will ultimately opt out.
“I need this season. This is my last season,” said Syracuse tight end Chris Elmore. “This could be a make-or-break for me to see whether I go to the next level or not. I’m committed to playing until they pull the plug on me.”