BCS Championship Game, Pasadena, California.
NCAA President Dr. Mark Emmert (Photo by USCGA, via Flickr)
Nothing has been ordinary in the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began. That includes the sports landscape in this country. Professional sports leagues now play their games in stadiums and arena in front of tens of thousands of empty seats. Meanwhile, Pac-12 schools such as The University of Washington and Washington State are preparing for a football season that might not happen.
College sports have been in a kind of “make it up as we go and hope for the best” mode since the NCAA halted athletics back in March. College sports governing body hasn’t been at the forefront of any major changes or decisions to continue fall athletics so far. Sure, they have played a small part, but any major changes have come from conferences, themselves.
Tuesday may be a day of reckoning for college athletics as we now know it. The NCAA Board of Governors meets to decide the fate of fall sports including football. This is a multi-Billion dollar industry so any decision will have ramifications. In some cases, the very survival of athletic scholarships, coach’s jobs, and entire school athletic departments are at stake.
There is plenty of hostility that serves as an undercurrent to Tuesday’s meeting. Never has the divide between the haves and have-nots been so wide in college athletics. It could be a tipping point that sees the top dogs packing up their footballs and walking away from the rest of the pack. There is no law that says college football must be sanctioned by the NCAA.
Four paragraphs into this story and the safety of student-athletes hasn’t been mentioned yet. Neither have the “demands” or threat to opt-out made by Pac-12 football players, published in “The Player’s Tribune” on Sunday.
Whatever decision comes down from the NCAA, they will say something to the effect of “we did this with the health and welfare of our student-athletes as the basis of our decision.”
While that is ultimately the deciding factor, it certainly isn’t the only factor. There are four options the board has. We take a look at each option and the effects each will have on college football.
Pac-12
The NCAA Board of Governors is a 25-member committee made up of university presidents, athletic directors, conference commissioners, NCAA President Mark Emmert, and five independent members. All levels of NCAA competition are represented, FBS, FCS, Division II, and Division III. They are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, August 4 to decide the status of all fall sports including the FCS football playoffs.
It’s the beginning of August. A decision by the NCAA about whether or not college football gets played this fall needs to happen soon. There is too much money on the line and not much time left to make a decision.
The NCAA could do what they did on July 24 and stall for a little more time. Maybe the pandemic will lessen its grip on the country in a few weeks.
No one will be happy about it but everyone would understand. It will allow for more behind the scenes politics.
Whatever schools and conferences are doing now, keep on doing it. The NCAA will provide safety guidelines everyone must follow in order to compete in 2020.
This is probably the easiest way to avoid a “civil war,” for now. The problem with that decision is the NCAA would be conceding more power to the conferences. There will be some egos and academic elitists in the room who will find that hard to swallow.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott.
Move fall sports to the spring. The Ivy League has already done it. Who knows, the Harvard-Yale game could be the sporting event of March.
This option is the biggest compromise. Delaying until the spring isn’t the worst idea. Then again, there are no guarantees that pandemic conditions will have changed by then. Power-5 schools might not love it, but a few serious breakouts at member schools could force their hand.
How the television network partners would handle the delay is a different discussion entirely. It could cost schools money, but not nearly as much as a cancellation.
This would be the outright cancellation of all fall 2020 sports. Remember, all spring sports such as baseball and softball were terminated less than six months ago.
Set the threat level to DEFCON 1 because war is coming. Power-5 conferences want to play football this fall. They have big dollar television contracts that pay their members somewhere between $25M-–$50M annually. Keep in mind, the NCAA does not regulate postseason games or the FBS Championship.
If their vote is to cancel fall sports, the ACC, Big Ten Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC can tell the NCAA to stick it and play anyway. As a matter of fact, in that scenario, they probably would. What gets lost in the shuffle is that the divide mentioned earlier will grow exponentially.
For example, an FCS school such as North Dakota State could make millions by playing a game at a Power-5 school. Because those games are so lucrative, sometimes it’s enough money to keep their entire athletics program afloat for the year. Not to mention the exposure they get by playing against a big school.
One sign that this might happen went down last week when the Big 12 canceled their virtual media day.
What do you think will happen on Tuesday? Let us know in the comments section below or on social media.