Big Ten and Pac-12 Pull the Plug on 2020 Season

The late Keith Jackson may have hailed from Georgia, but he was schooled in the art of broadcasting at Washington State University.

Gotta wonder if one of his signature calls was ringing in the Pac-12 presidents' ears when they surveyed the disaster that is Covid-19 and borrowed it to fit the situation:

Whoa, Nellie!

 

And in the spirit of humanity while risking a financial hit that could well draw a targeting ejection if it was on the field, OGs joined their counterparts in the Big Ten by calling a halt to their 2020 season -- for all their fall programs -- before it even got started.

They're not the first to jettison their seasons. The way was already paved:

• The Ivy League read the tea leaves in a scientific way and was the first to cash it in.
• The MAC came to the same conclusion.
• The Mountain West followed suit.
• Independents UConn, UMass, and New Mexico State have bagged it, too.

So, where's that leave us?

 

Correct.

The other Power Fives are still wondering if they can weave and dodge through the pandemic. Being as the SEC and Big XII are based in regions where college football is damn near a religion, they're surely gonna keep plans in place until the last possible minute before making an ultimate decision.

What the ACC's doing hanging tough with them is probably down to Clemson leading the charge to give it a go.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 were already facing enough pressure, what with hotspots aplenty in their regions as well as virtual player revolts.

So, they heeded those immortal words from that legendary sage of a different time ...

The Pac-12 did get proactive on the second-most pertinent issue -- health is allegedly first -- caused by the pandemic and their anticipated reaction to it. The conference put a special loan program in place for its athletic departments to help weather the storm:

• Each school can receive a max of $83million at a rate of 3.75% over 10 years, so
• If all programs took the max, the total would be $996million.

 

Most of the collateral is coming from the Pac-12's media rights contracts with ESPN and Fox Sports, which total $916million over the next four seasons.

The intangible right now, though, is whether those full amounts are gonna be paid. That'll depend on what the conference does to make up for the 'lost' games.

What wasn't lost on the Big Ten and Pac-12 presidents was the growing number of myocarditis incidents in young athletes from all sports. This heart inflammation has been discovered in Covid-19 patients and has the possibility of being a lifelong condition.

 

The major logistics problem, of course, is college football players can't really live in the sorta bubble that pro clubs are deploying. The closest format to what they'd do is MLB's, which has shown how challenging it is to keep it from popping.

Combine this difficulty with the data showing young people continue to be the globe's most prolific spreaders of the virus, and the university presidents well understood they were staring an even more devastating financial matter square in the eyeballs:

Liability litigation.

OGs would need to pull out every trick in the book to make a case in their favor.

 

With this in mind, the main question now is how this would factor in to what the other Power Fivers are gonna decide.

And that leads to one that could carry deep consequences.

 

Like the rest of us, college football's in some heavy life-changing times right now.

Literally.