Big Ten and Pac-12 won’t have fall sports. What does that mean for UK and the SEC?
The Big Ten wasn’t the first college football conference to postpone the fall sports season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was the first one of major significance. The second followed soon after.
On Tuesday, the Big Ten — which boasts several prominent football-playing schools, including Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State — voted to postpone the entirety of its fall sports season, including football. It became the third Football Bowl Subdivision conference to give up on playing fall sports, joining the Mid-American Conference and the Mountain West Conference, which announced their decisions over the last few days.
The Pac-12 about an hour later joined the Big Ten in postponing its fall season. It went a step further, delaying all sports until at least Jan. 1; the Big Ten said it would continue to evaluate winter and spring sports.
The possibility of all fall sports to be staged in the spring semester will be evaluated, both leagues said.
Following the Big Ten’s and Pac-12’s decision, 53 of a total 130 FBS programs will not play football this fall (40.7 percent).
Will the Southeastern Conference bail?
Tuesday’s decisions by the Big Ten and Pac-12 apply pressure to the other “Power Five” leagues — the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and SEC — to follow suit
The SEC, of which the University of Kentucky is a member, has not yet indicated that it will fall in lock step with whatever decisions are made by other leagues. During a Tuesday morning appearance on the “Dan Patrick Show,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said its medical advisory group has OK’d the league to continue proceeding with its plans to prepare for a fall season.
Sankey also said that it would be unwise for the SEC to be the only football conference that plays in the fall.
“I don’t think that’s the right direction. Could we? Certainly,” Sankey said. “So there’s a difference between can you do something and should you do something in life. So we’re actually set up with our schedule, with our own health protocols, that we could if that was the circumstance to operate on our own. I’m not sure that’s the wisest direction. But there’s been a lot of interesting things that have happened since March in college sports.”
Later on Tuesday, the SEC and ACC released similar statements — almost simultaneously — that said they would continue to follow the policies and procedures in place within their conferences.
“I look forward to learning more about the factors that led the Big Ten and Pac-12 leadership to take these actions today,” Sankey said in the statement. “I remain comfortable with the thorough and deliberate approach that the SEC and our 14 members are taking to support a healthy environment for our student-athletes.”
On Wednesday, the Big 12 announced it would join the SEC and ACC in moving forward for now.
“Our student-athletes want to compete, and it is the board’s collective opinion that sports can be conducted safely and in concert with the best interests of their well-being,” Texas Christian Chancellor Victor Boschini, the Big 12 board of directors chairman, said in a statement. “We remain vigilant in monitoring the trends and effects of COVID-19 as we learn more about the virus. If at any point our scientists and doctors conclude that our institutions cannot provide a safe and appropriate environment for our participants, we will change course.”
What about the postseason?
Since it began in the 2014 season, the Big Ten has had a team in the College Football Playoff field every year except 2018. The Pac-12 has had teams qualify twice. If that event occurs neither, of course, will this year.
“It’s too soon to say,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock told Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde of the impact of Tuesday’s decisions. “We are awaiting guidance from the CFP board and management committee.”
The Big Ten also has nine bowl partnerships in 2020, not counting the CFP games. Three of those — the Citrus Bowl, Music City Bowl and Outback Bowl — are tie-ins whose other participant is supposed to be an SEC team. Another Big Ten bowl — the Quick Lane Bowl — officially has no partner teams available in 2020 due to the MAC’s fall postponement.
The Pac-12 has eight bowl tie-ins for 2020, excluding the CFP. One of those — the Las Vegas Bowl — is supposed to be played against an SEC team.
Another, the inaugural Redbox Bowl, announced previously that it would not host a game this year. It is a partner of the Big Ten and Pac-12.
It was unlikely that every — if any — college football postseason bowls would be played in the 2020-21 season before conferences started pulling out. Now multiple cancellations seem all but guaranteed.
Could Big Ten/Pac-12 teams bolt to the SEC, or elsewhere?
Given all the money involved, voiding contracts in the middle of a pandemic seems like an awfully crazy idea. But, there’s precedent: the conferences already tore up a bunch of them when it revised its schedule to remove teams’ non-conference games from the schedule.
If the other three major leagues insist on playing, it’s conceivable that schools whose coaches and athletic directors have loudly dissented about postponement — Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio State, to name a few — could reach out to other conferences and attempt to find a fit. That decision would likely come with a major financial sacrifice, but it’s possible that, with tens of millions of dollars already lost anyway, a “what-do-we-have-to-lose” mentality could prevail.
Such a call also would have to be accepted by the other leagues, too, though. Sankey somewhat sidestepped the issue during his radio appearance Tuesday.
“There are probably any number of legal, contractual, media, I could just go down the list of reasons that that’s not quite practical,” Sankey said. “So that would be my answer in avoiding any interference claims on the ‘Dan Patrick Show’ on Tuesday morning.”
The divvying up of TV dollars and contract disputes aside, a cynic might say that schools in the ACC, Big 12 and SEC — especially the powerhouse brands — would be happier to leave the likes of Michigan and Ohio State looking on enviously from the outside while they play on Saturdays. You can’t discount the potential pettiness of schools that could stand to gain an inch in, say, recruiting in a year where their biggest competitors are sitting at home.
Speaking of which ...
Could this help UK recruiting?
If the SEC moves forward with playing, it can only be a positive for it to be on television while the Big Ten Network runs reruns from the 2019 season.
The Wildcats recruit heavily in Big Ten country — Michigan and Ohio in particular. Of the 104 players on UK’s roster entering the 2019 season, 23 were from Ohio (matching Kentucky for the most from one state), three hailed from Michigan and one from Pennsylvania. That was 25.9 percent of the players on last year’s team.
Even if the SEC doesn’t ultimately play, the optics of possibly being the last conference to give up on football could play well in the living rooms of recruits, even if recruiting ace Vince Marrow is visiting those living rooms via Zoom. The SEC wasn’t the first to punt on football this fall, and there could be value in that even if it ultimately waves the white flag.
And if you allow a guy like Marrow to work his magic free of the stressors brought on by coaching during an actual football season? Look out.
Why is this happening now?
Both the Big Ten and Pac-12 in the last two weeks released revised football schedules featuring conference-only games, each stressing that the release of those schedules did not guarantee that they would actually ever be played.
The potential of COVID-19 to affect individuals on a long-term basis beyond the initial period of sickness seems to be a pivotal point of concern for college administrators. Myocarditis — the scarring of heart tissue — is increasingly being identified in young COVID-19 patients, even those who otherwise presented as asymptomatic.
Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic reported that at least 10 Big Ten athletes have myocarditis.
What happens next?
Kentucky and other SEC teams are allowed to move from the voluntary workout phase into the formal preseason practice stage next week. How schools succeed in crossing that safety barrier will determine where things go from here. The ACC is scheduled to open its season Sept. 10. The SEC and Big 12 plan to kick off two weeks later on Sept. 26.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 5:01 PM.
