No-huddle offense
Big Ten breaks ranks with conference-only schedule; Big 12 won't follow for now
In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby spoke about the cooperation among the Power 5 conferences and how they planned to work together to ensure football in the autumn.
That cooperation is fractured. The Big Ten announced Thursday that it will play conference games only in 2020, and various reports say the Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast conferences plan to follow suit. A Big 12 source told The Oklahoman that he was told the ACC has not voted.
That would leave only the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference forging ahead with nonconference games.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told the Des Moines Register on Thursday that his league does not plan to soon announce a conferenceonly plan. And OU athletic director Joe Castiglione expressed regret that the Power 5 conferences didn't stay in concert or at least that the Big Ten didn't wait a little longer. Bowlsby told CBS Sports that in a conference call earlier Thursday, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren told Bowlsby there would be no surprises coming from the Big Ten. Then came the surprise announcement.
“When we've already waited this long, why not wait another two or three weeks?” Castiglione asked. He referenced OU being among the last Power 5 schools to open their facility to workouts, on July 1, and said the same question then applies now. “What do we gain by not waiting a few weeks?”
Most timelines, as they relate to the coronavirus, listed between July 15 and
July 31 as the period when decisions had to be made about the upcoming season. The Big Ten's announcement was a little early. But it's understandable.
“The only advantage to (a conference-only schedule) is you can spread the games out over more weeks,” Bowlsby told CBS Sports. “It doesn't mean you're going to start your schedule the first week of October. You're going to try to start it on time and spread it out so you have more time to recover and more time to get over outbreaks. For whatever reason, the Big Ten felt like they wanted to go to it right now.”
It's much easier to manage a pandemicstricken season when dealing only with fellow conference members: everything from travel to testing protocol to postponement/forfeit issues.
It's going to be hard enough to agree on
those issues when you are working with familiar and friendly faces. Dealing with relative strangers would be much more difficult.
Here's an example. Athletic departments want to make sure they are on the same testing schedule as opponents. OU, for instance, has been in contact with Missouri State, the Sooners' season-opening foe, about when to test athletes. The Bears have agreed to match OU's testing calendar, but such cooperation is not assured with every opponent.
Rescheduling postponed games is far easier when they go through only one conference office. The Big Ten, for example, could postpone its championship game and get in further games, if need be. Or, as Bowlsby said, give itself 14 weeks to play the 10 games. The flexibility to start the conference schedule in early September gives teams a much better chance to finish a league schedule.
Of course, the truth is, autumn football is going to be difficult even if every team played only
in-state opponents. The pandemic is real. We kept a lid on it with an economic shutdown, but that's not feasible for the long-term, and we've been lax with our actions in re-openings, particularly in the football hotbeds of the Southwest and Deep South.
Can even a conference-only schedule work? Not without a change in the virus surge. But even if the virus gets back under control like it was a month ago, football seems headed for a checkered season at best.
The scenarios keep getting worse and worse. When good news arrives, it is soon followed by discouraging news. OU reports no new positive cases among its roster; Ohio State shuts down its facility because of an outbreak. Notre Dame reports just one positive case out of 252 people tested; North Carolina shuts down voluntary activities after 37 people within athletics test positive.
“It has grown more pessimistic over the past two weeks, but I'm not to a point to say we shouldn't continue to plan for the potential to open on time,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told ESPN. “I just think it's less likely. We have to shift our allocations a little bit — a little more time on planning the alternatives, and a little less time on planning routine go-forward.”
The Big Ten decided to go full-time on the alternative. Which means no Ohio State-Oregon, no Michigan-Washington, no Michigan StateMiami, no WisconsinNotre Dame, no Penn State-Virginia Tech, no MarylandWest Virginia, no Iowa-Iowa State.
College football is headed for a messy season, if there's a season at all.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at oklahoman.com/berrytramel.