Everybody’s ready for Pac-12 football but the Pac-12
Pac-12 The eyes of college football fans turned to the Pac-12 after the Big Ten announced they would play football this fall. Pac -12 Commissioner Larry Scott look lost when the attention to his conference.
College football is making a triumphant comeback. This week the Big Ten reversed an earlier decision to postpone football until spring and announced an October start. Meanwhile, the last two days, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott looked like a deer in the headlights of a convoy.
He and the Pac-12 conference were utterly unprepared for a groundswell of support to play football this fall. Partisan politics divides this country. But a republican president and two democratic governors can jump on the “shut up and snap the ball” train.
It’s been a tough 48 hours for Scott. First, the Pac-12 got called out by President Trump to get their act together and play. Scott didn’t even get a phone call like Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren did. All the Pac-12 got were just some remarks at a White House press conference. Then Scott was caught off guard when the media asked about his conference playing football in the fall. He said something to the effect of “well, gee, we’d love to, but these states have restrictions, ya know we can’t just do that…”
The governors of California, Gavin Newsom, and Oregon, Kate Brown, both said that Pac-12 football from schools in their state was okay with them. In California, there are already exceptions in place that allow the Chargers, Rams, and 49ers to practice.
Scott’s lack of preparedness exposed
Maybe the most damning evidence of how Scott committed another big PR blunder, comes from Oregon. Governor Brown, when asked, told the media that no one from the conference submitted any plans for the resumption of Pac-12 football to her state. The equivalent of “don’t pass the buck to politicians, or we’ll show you how politics works in the real world.”
This was after Scott went public on September 3 about the conference’s new partnership with Quidel Corp. to supply rapid tests for COVID-19. It took one meeting on Wednesday between the University of Oregon, Oregon State, and the Oregon Health Authority to get an exemption for their teams to resume practice. The same day POTUS spoke about it, and Brown said she wasn’t standing in their way.
It was the same with USC, UCLA, and Los Angeles County health officials. What was going on in the last two weeks? Why did it take that long and a prod from POTUS to get the ball rolling? Surely, Scott and the conference execs must have had a plan. Could they be that unprepared?
Later in the day, Scott issued a statement to the effect that schools need local approval to resume athletic activities. The conference could then schedule games for late October or early November. Something the Big Ten was working on for weeks.
It gives the impression that a “holy crap” meeting was called at the Pac-12’s San Francisco offices for Thursday. It’s not hard to see Scott in front of a bank of monitors with his advisors. He’ll say: “People, we need to announce a plan quickly. Who has any ideas?”
Related: Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott may be on the way out
Statement from Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott on positive developments from governors of California and Oregon: pic.twitter.com/bZVuGT6vuW
— Pac-12 Conference (@pac12) September 16, 2020
Expect an announcement late Friday afternoon. The Pac-12 will tell the country that they had a plan for a fall football season just waiting for local and state approval.