Conference sees decline in revenue
Commissioner Bowlsby worried second wave of virus could affect fall
AUSTIN — Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby preempted Thursday’s hourlong media teleconference by warning the scattered participants about potential intruders.
Apparently, Bowlsby’s 4year-old grandson and 1year-old granddaughter have made a habit of invading grandpa’s home office with no regard to the work at hand.
“So if you hear a little background noise, that’s probably what you’re hearing,” he said.
This is the new normal for those forced to work from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Home offices, inconvenient drop-ins from children and grandchildren and business conducted via Zoom, Skype and teleconference. No one, not even one of the NCAA’s Power Five commissioners, knows how long this era of social distancing will keep the sports world suspended.
Bowlsby has spent the past two weeks on daily calls with fellow Power Five commissioners. Teleconferences between Big 12 athletics directors are taking place at least twice a week.
Bowlsby shared some insight into those discussions Thursday afternoon. And what his lengthy session with dozens of journalists did was paint a bleak picture for both the Big 12 and college athletics at large.
Spring football? Not happening. Fall sports sans fans? Possible. An abbreviated or canceled football season? It’s all on the table.
“We’re in unprecedented times,” Bowlsby said. “We have the same questions you have. When do we return to normalcy or some semblance of normalcy? The uncertainty of all this is unnerving.”
Bowlsby seemed certain only that this haze of uncertainty won’t dissolve anytime soon. He also noted, on multiple occasions, the potential of a COVID-19 recurrence which epidemiologists have not yet been able to rule out.
This crisis extending into the fall could place the Big 12 and its members under further financial duress.
Bowlsby estimated the conference lost $6.6 million from the cancellation of its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in Kansas City. Altogether, the cessation of spring and winter sports could cost the conference between $15 and $18 million to distribute between members.
“The NCAA board of governors just took action to distribute $225 million compared to $600 million, so we would normally get about $24 million from that,” Bowlsby added. “Instead, I think that distribution is going to be around $10 million. So we’re going to take some hits there.”
There is not yet a contingency plan in place for a course of action should the NCAA be compelled to prolong this sports hiatus through the start of the next academic year. Soccer, volleyball, cross country, water polo, field hockey and football would be affected.
A lost football season especially looms as a disastrous proposition for every conference at every level. It is the “driver” for the league’s most lucrative television contracts, sponsorships and gate revenue.
“We haven’t done a lot of modeling, and we haven’t done a lot of planning because I think it’s far too early to do that,” Bowlsby said. “We certainly are looking at the next 60 to 90 days, and I think depending upon how that goes, we’ll beginning modeling around what the fall looks like.
“It’s a whole new ballgame if we find ourselves not playing football. It affects everything we do.”
Discussions as to what to do with spring and winter athletes remain ongoing and are unlikely to be resolved within the next few weeks.
Eligibility relief has been proposed, though Bowlsby is uncertain what exactly those measures might look like.
Any sort of relief extended to spring and winter athletes who had their seasons disrupted would require the NCAA to, at least temporarily, expand team roster size and increase the amount of scholarships a program is allowed to offer.
“It’s not resolved,” Bowlsby said. “I could capably argue either side of it. The thing I’m most concerned about is I worry that with the uncertainty of our current circumstances, we might find ourselves with a disruption in the fall or winter next year due to a rebound in the coronavirus. If we have that again, then are we going to offer fall sport athletes another year and how does that interface with their academic undertakings and those sorts of things?
“We’re just starting to talk about it. It has a lot of moving parts.”
Bowlsby said the conference is aiming for a return to activity within a window of six to eight weeks. But even that projection is tenuous.
For now, the best the NCAA, Big 12 and fans can do is take seriously the threat everyone is facing and hope a return to normalcy includes Saturday football.
“I just don’t think there’s a lot of credibility to putting together anything other than very rudimentary plans,” Bowlsby said. “Right now, our plan is to play the football season as it’s scheduled. If we find out we have to depart from that, we will do so. We will do it in plenty of time to let people know what it is we’re thinking and to challenge what we’re thinking.”