BIG TEN TO FACE HURDLES AHEAD
When the Big Ten reversed course earlier this week and announced it would attempt to stage a football season, the chorus of cheers from fans, players and coaches overshadowed one fact: The conferences whose seasons are underway already have faced stumbles.
North Carolina’s game today against Charlotte was canceled because the 49ers had too many offensive linemen in quarantine. Three Big 12 season openers had to be postponed last weekend. Virginia Tech could not play its opening two games, first because the Hokies’ opponent had an outbreak and then because its own program had too many players missing. Meanwhile, LSU coach Ed Orgeron told reporters that “most” of his team already had contracted the novel coronavirus and recovered, leaving the coach hopeful their absences wouldn’t disrupt the Tigers’ season, which is slated to begin next week.
More than a dozen games in the Football Bowl Subdivision have been postponed or canceled. A league’s only defense is to embrace scheduling flexibility. But that’s hardly an option now for the Big Ten.
The conference’s plan is to pack nine games into nine weeks, beginning Oct. 23 and lasting until the night before the College Football Playoff committee selects its top four teams Dec. 20. The thought process is that playing nine games is better than eight — for a conference seeking TV revenue, teams hoping to earn a spot in the playoff and athletes who want to showcase their ability. But in exchange, the Big Ten gave up its room for error.
“We’re going to put together a nine-game schedule obviously,” Penn State Athletic Director Sandy Barbour said Thursday. “But we don’t know how many of those games will get played. If anything, the first couple weeks of the season have been examples of that for us.”
The Big Ten’s schedule will be released soon, officials said. Schools will play all six of the teams in their division, plus two cross-division opponents. The champions of each division then will meet in a title game the final weekend. In an unconventional twist, all Big Ten teams will play a ninth game, matching up against the team in the opposite division that finished in the same place.
When the conference announced each team’s schedule Aug. 5, before it postponed the season less than a week later, the Big Ten touted flexibility as a core tenet with 10 conference games over 15 weeks. It no longer has that luxury. University leaders at conference schools maintain the availability of rapid antigen testing played a key role in the reversal of their decision.
A player who tests positive can be promptly removed from practice and isolated, which should help programs prevent the virus from spreading. Teams in other conferences have postponed games when a large chunk of players are not available either because of a positive test or close contact with someone who contracted the virus. The ACC, SEC and Big 12 test players multiple times per week but not daily.
“One of the things that we feel good about is daily testing,” Maryland Athletic Director Damon Evans said. “We hope (that) will put us in a position to really be able to contact trace and to, more specifically, provide a clean practice area, a clean field and limit the spread of the virus amongst teammates moving forward. So we will deal with things as they come. Obviously, it is going to be a tight window for us.”
The Big Ten set thresholds that outline when a team must suspend practice and competition for at least seven days. If the team’s positivity rate exceeds 5 percent and more than 7.5 percent of individuals of the overall team population are positive, the program will pause. If the team hits one of those benchmarks and is in a caution area for the other — defined as a positivity rate between 2 and 5 percent and a population positivity rate between 3.5 and 7.5 percent — the program should “consider (the) viability of continuing with scheduled competition.”
These metrics do not pertain to the campus or local community. Some Big Ten schools are struggling to contain the virus. More than 2,000 students at the University of Wisconsin have tested positive for the coronavirus. Inperson instruction has paused. As of Thursday morning, 400 students are isolating on campus. But with games being contested without fans, cancellations will depend only on the rates within the program.
Barbour said if a game cannot be played, it will be ruled a no-contest, rather than a forfeit. But without any window to make up canceled games, the conference faces the potential of teams playing an unequal number of games. What will be the procedure to determine whether a 6-1 team merits a spot in the conference title game ahead of a 4-1 peer in its division? Is 5-0 more deserving than 7-1?
Usually, if two teams finish with the same conference record, the result of their head-to-head matchup solves the problem. But what if that game couldn’t be played? The possible hurdles are endless, and the conference doesn’t have an answer yet.
Pac-12 vote next week
At the end of a whirlwind week, one that turned the tides on the Pac-12’s once-daunting path back to fall football, university presidents and chancellors from the conference’s member schools met to deliberate over a season that now appears imminent.
No votes were ultimately cast, and no dates for a potential restart were set. But after an “informative and productive meeting” the conference announced that it’s only decision on Friday was to push its vote on fall sports to the following Thursday.
Before the meeting began, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott told the “Dan Patrick Show” that he wouldn’t push for a vote on Friday, but that the conference needed a decision by next week.
“We’ve overcome the major obstacles that we had and the criteria that our medical advisors set with the public health authority approvals,” Scott said. “But our presidents and chancellors have to weigh it on their campuses. They’ll be the ultimate decision-makers. … I’ll report to them that we’ve achieved those things and then it’s up to them to weigh it all and decide.”