The Fate Of Fall Sports Likely To Be Determined In The Next 72 Hours
The next 72 hours will determine if we have college football this fall, or any fall sports for that matter..
On Saturday, the Mid American Conference announced that they were postponing their fall sports until the spring, which includes football.
The MAC, considered a Group of 5 conference, is starting to look like the first domino to fall among the FBS conferences.
The Big Ten presidents met on Saturday and, while they did not vote to postpone the season, they did vote that football practices should remain in the “acclimatization phase” until further notice, which means helmets only and without contact.
Apparently commissioners of the Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting as concerns continue to grow among college football athletics officials that the upcoming football season, and other fall sports, will not be able to be played due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It appears that, even though the Big Ten presidents did not vote to postpone the season, they are ready to pull the plug on the fall season and wanted to gauge whether the other commissioners and university presidents would join them.
The Big Ten presidents could meet as soon as Sunday Night with the feedback from the other Power Five commissioners and could be the first to vote to postpone fall sports season to the spring among the Power Five.
The PAC-12 is set to meet again on Tuesday.
Basically no one wants to be the first, nor the last.
However if all of the power five conferences vote to postpone fall sports, including football, to the spring they will need to have some sort of plan ready to announce to the fans and student-athletes. They will not want to hear “we’ll get back to you on that.”
I fall into the camp that having a football season is probably one of the best things for the student-athletes. They will be on campus with excellent medical care and rigorous testing. Probably the biggest threat would be college parties and girls. Because, lets face it, some college kids are going to have some parties and athletes will be invited.