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COPING WITH CORONA
With vague mentions of medical uncertainty and safety, the Big Ten Conference assured a huge financial loss, untold downside ramifications and other unintended consequences by shutting down football and other fall spots. Here’s the statement we must accept:
In making its decision, which was based on multiple factors, the Big Ten Conference relied on the medical advice and counsel of the Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee.
“Our primary responsibility is to make the best possible decisions in the interest of our students, faculty and staff,” said Morton Schapiro, Chair of the Big Ten Council of Presidents/Chancellors and Northwestern University President.
“The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” said Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.
“We know how significant the student-athlete experience can be in shaping the future of the talented young women and men who compete in the Big Ten Conference. Although that knowledge made this a painstaking decision, it did not make it difficult. While I know our decision today will be disappointing in many ways for our thousands of student-athletes and their families, I am heartened and inspired by their resilience, their insightful and discerning thoughts, and their participation through our conversations to this point. Everyone associated with the Big Ten Conference and its member institutions is committed to getting everyone back to competition as soon as it is safe to do so.”
The Big Ten’s plan was to bring down all of college football for 2020, but so far they have failed. The Pac-12 was quick to cave, but the Big 12 affirmed its plans to play on Tuesday and so far the SEC and ACC are resolute. Other Southern-tilting conferences (the AAC, the Sun Belt, Conference USA -with a few team exceptions like Old Dominion and UConn) are persevering.
There is talk of spring football, but few are optimistic, especially if the same decision-makers are making the decisions.
@Dan_Hope
Urban Meyer on BTN now.
Asked for his reaction to today’s news, Meyer said “heartbreaking, devastation.” On the notion of playing spring football: “No chance.” Said it’s unrealistic to ask players to play two seasons within one calendar year. “I really don’t see that happening.”
Apparently no one actually involved in football had anything to say about the decision, but, for the most part they have meekly fallen in line with lukewarm “support.”
Still, some of the undercurrents of resentment are leaking out. Michigan’s president draws the ire of a member of the team. Zach Shaw of CBSSports.com:
While Michigan president Mark Schlissel played a significant role in ending the Michigan football team’s 2020 season and publicly supported the Big Ten’s decision, at least one Wolverine player is irate at Schlissel’s handling of the situation.
Following Tuesday’s practice, Michigan walk-on defensive back and special teams contributor Tyler Cochran took to Instagram to voice his displeasure with the decision and Schlissel’s role. Among many frustrations, Cochran said that it was “more disappointing that the @uofmichigan president did not come speak to our team or even explain his decision making process. Not surprising since I’ve never seen him in the facility in my 4+ years here.”
Nebraska, where the wheat grows high and the Covid count is low, has talked of persevering without the conference, but in this instance, Commissioner Warren talks tough.
After twice evading the question on the Big Ten Network, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, in an interview with Yahoo! Sports, said Nebraska is not allowed to pursue a fall football schedule after the league chose to postpone its season until spring 2021.
“No,” Warren said to Yahoo! “Not and be a member of the Big Ten Conference.”
There are those who say that could be Nebraska’s end game after all, as the school that once fervently sought membership in the Big Ten has found itself on the periphery of the league with little in common with schools like Rutgers. Danny Shatel in the Omaha World:
Will we remember this as the beginning of the end of Nebraska and the Big Ten?
Absolutely. And the way the Big Ten and Kevin Warren have conducted themselves, that would be a good thing.
The signals were sent initially by Scott Frost on Monday and retransmitted on Tuesday by Frost, NU President Ted Carter, Chancellor Ronnie Green and Athletic Director Bill Moos.
They were received in all corners of the internet world. On Tuesday, I was a guest on a sports talk show in San Francisco.
First question: “Is Nebraska bolting for the Big 12?”
I don’t hear any denials coming out of Lincoln. Or Chicago.
This came up because Frost on Monday said that while NU was a “proud member of the Big Ten,” it was not so proud that it wouldn’t look for other schools to play if the Big Ten shut down this fall.
Frost, along with NU’s top brass, reiterated that intent on Tuesday after the Big Ten’s announcement.
Now, is Nebraska actually going to play any games this fall? Not if every other league is shut down, too. But really, that was beside the point.
That was Nebraska doing more than asserting its displeasure with the Big Ten. It looked like a cry for help, a flare to any other conference that might be paying attention.
Say, one to the south.
You can guarantee it was heard to the north and east — all the way to ESPN, where Northwestern grad Michael Wilbon went on a Nebraska rant. Wilbon accused Nebraska of whining and added, “The Big Ten has operated for 116 seasons, mostly damn successful, without Nebraska …”
He added that he hoped someone on the Big Ten presidents call told Nebraska to “get the hell out.”
Looks like this shotgun marriage could be on the rocks.
It’s important to remember that 10 years ago, Nebraska was running away from the Big 12 — not running to the Big Ten.
It’s a move that provided NU security and money, and that’s about it. Frankly, it’s been an odd fit.
Nebraska football has been in various stages of construction and remodeling. It hasn’t been anything special. But neither has the Big Ten.
It looks a lot less impressive in the post-Jim Delany era.
The Big Ten’s move, particularly in light of the link between COVID-19 and the heart condition myocarditis, was not a surprise. It’s been speculated this would be the result.
Part of the appeal of the Big Ten was that it looked calculating and smart, always a chess move ahead of the rest.
Apparently that was Delany.
Now, navigating a pandemic is hard. But the Big Ten has made some strange moves of late. It shocked the other major conferences last month by announcing it would play conference games only.
Then, last week it released a full Big Ten schedule for the 2020 season. Six days later, it was over.
Then came Warren’s interview Tuesday on the Big Ten Network. It was eye-opening. Head-scratching. Certainly, embarrassing.
What changed in the last six days? Warren did not answer. Was Nebraska allowed to play non-Big Ten schools? Warren rambled something nonsensical. Again, no answer.
BTN host Dave Revsine handled the interview well, asking the same tough but fair questions once and twice. But Warren flunked the big moment.
For the past two days, a handful of Big Ten coaches — including Frost — basically challenged the league and the new commissioner. Would Warren fire back? Would he assert his position of power?
No. He swung and missed, by saying absolutely nothing.
This is a time for transparency. Specifics. Consider this: If myocarditis is tied to COVID-19 and offers a frightening prospect for athletes, why are the NBA, MLB (and soon) and NFL playing?
It’s a question worth asking. But on Tuesday, that would have been a fruitless exercise, too.
It’s not fair to compare Warren to the legendary Delany, who ruled with an old-school fist. But the former Big Ten boss also elicited a certain trust. He would do it right.
The Big Ten now resembles 14 presidents ruling the roost with Delany retired in his North Carolina cabin. And a commissioner who looks like their front man.
Not a good one, either.
If you’re Nebraska, it doesn’t conjure a lot of trust in the Big Ten. In fact, with Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan coaches also defying the Big Ten, the league looks less and less unified all the time.
If you’re Nebraska, you’re running out of reasons to be here. Especially when you don’t really have a lot in common, anyway.
NU wanted to give football every possible chance this fall, delay the decision as long as it could. That’s the approach of the SEC and ACC. NU has more in common with those leagues, and the Big 12, obviously.
Pete Thamel of YahooSports.com is quick to support the decision by the heroic Warren and his presidents.
Warren’s stance on Nebraska’s fall football fantasy would make former commissioner Jim Delany proud. Delany ruled the league with swagger, intimidation and the occasional f-bomb. It’s safe to say Nebraska wouldn’t have attempted to go rogue with Delany in the commissioner chair, as it would have received phone calls with Delany’s Jersey-colorful vernacular. And, likely, it would have been guaranteed the Cornhuskers would have opened their league schedule on the road the next three years with some combination of Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan as a reminder of who is in charge.
Warren hasn’t been perfect through his eight-month baptism by blowtorch as Big Ten commissioner. He alienated some of his fellow commissioner colleagues when he surprised them by going to a conference-only schedule. He certainly burned some goodwill with his coaches, athletic directors and presidents with the clunky way the Big Ten arrived at the decision.
Warren’s task learning the nuances of the college football ecosystems during a pandemic – he arrived from the Minnesota Vikings front office – is equatable to getting dropped into Middle East peace negotiations and conducting them in sign language. There’s a segment of coaches and ADs irked with the way the league’s decision unfolded, especially the lack of a plan to tell student athletes about the specifics of the spring and their eligibility.
Warren prides himself as a consensus builder. A key phrase that every conference uses when announcing decisions is “unanimous,” even when their decisions aren’t unanimous. They’re always at least advertised as such. So it was telling that the Big Ten didn’t bother with that word in its press release Tuesday. It meant Warren navigating an unprecedented situation without even getting to pretend like everyone is getting along.
This was a no-win situation for Warren. Lead a decision to cancel the fall season and the players, coaches and fans all revolt. Lead a decision to play amid a pandemic and you lose the academics and medical professionals. Ultimately, the Big Ten ended up in a smart place. There’s an exponentially better chance of the remaining three major conferences joining the Big Ten on the sideline than there is in those leagues finishing the season. Vegas wouldn’t even give you odds on that bet.
From a risk-management perspective, there’s also a strong argument those leagues have a better chance of ending up with glaring issues than they do actually finishing the season. No matter your politics, view on the virus or perspective on the season, this 2020 fall football season was always a slog with long odds. That got lost a little bit the past 72 hours.
Cut through the roar of emotion this week and it remains a daunting challenge to navigate an entire season this fall. There are health risks both known and unknown, tens of thousands of students returning to campuses and a lack of frequent and accurate testing. Maybe this will be better in the spring. Maybe it won’t. But the best chance for any medical breakthrough that could allow the sport to play remains rapid and accurate testing.
Warren’s rationale gives us a glimpse into what we’ll see from him in the upcoming years as a leader. He has conviction and principle, and the baseline of his decision is difficult to argue against, no matter how badly you want to see your favorite team play.
“When you’re dealing with the lives of human beings, you can’t have ‘I don’t knows,’” Warren said in a phone interview. “These are amateur athletes, they’re not professionals. They are amateurs. We’re not the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball.”
When Warren noted there were too many questions he didn’t know the answers to, he was prodded for specifics. He asked: How many times can you get COVID-19? How does contact tracing really work? What does intense training do for asymptomatic or symptomatic individuals who have COVID-19?
“There’s a whole litany of items from a health and wellness standpoint where there’s different opinions,” Warren said. He didn’t think “I don’t know” was an adequate answer.
Warren won’t be invited to the Lincoln or Columbus Touchdown Club to speak anytime soon. And it’ll take him a little while to navigate the political damage in his league.
But as the Big Ten landed the plane and bounced on the runway for the past 72 hours, Warren’s actions remained rooted in pragmatic reasons. Through adversity, character is revealed. And Warren’s has been shown to err on the side of safety, health and caution.
As for the most extreme signs of disrespect that emerged in Lincoln, Warren showed he’s not afraid to stand up to schools who try to rally their base at his expense. Well, the Cornhuskers have been dared to follow through. The hunch here is their actions will be much quieter than their words.
Speaking for those who feel the Big Ten erred is Clay Travis:
On August 5th the Big Ten released a football schedule that was set to begin as early as the first week of September. On August 11th the Big Ten announced that they are postponing their whole Fall football season.
That tells you all you need to know.
The conference has had five months to prepare for how to deal with this virus, yet they were so disorganized that they released a full schedule and canceled the football season less than a week later?
If you follow the media closely enough, you know that six days is actually as much as twice as much time as elapsed between when the Big Ten released their schedule and when commissioner Kevin Warren decided the season would not happen.
On Saturday and Sunday, leaks were pouring out through the media like a waterfall. To call the Big Ten brass a sieve would be an insult to a tool which actually stops some materials from passing through.
Maybe the rest of the power five conferences follow the Big Ten and they don’t ultimately look too craven to wait this out for a month or two and see if things improve. Maybe they actually pull off Spring football, though it’s hard to imagine this virus will have a vaccine that young, healthy people can access without clawing them away from at-risk citizens by then. It’s also hard to imagine that this virus is better when it’s cold in most of the Big Ten states rather than warm. Who knows.
What we do know is that the Big Ten is lying if they said they had a plan, because if this was actually their plan they would’ve known how stupid it looked for them to cancel the season right after releasing the schedule.
And now we await to see if this blatant disorganization is enough to push any of their member institutions into secession.
And these tweets:
@ClayTravis
Big Ten logic: it’s safe to open campuses for classes, let kids live in dorms, & let athletes train for 20 hours a week in their sports, but it’s not safe to play games in any sports. This is insanity.
@ClayTravis
Fascinating legal issue: shouldn’t every person paying for the Big Ten Network and the PAC 12 Network receive refunds for the fall (and probably the spring too)? Those networks are in breach of their entire reason to exist without any live sports to air.
@ClayTravis
The liability argument for college football makes zero sense. First, if colleges are all open, colleges have FAR more liability with regular students than athletes. Second, causation is a major challenge here. How does student prove precisely where infection happened?
@ClayTravis
Tons of people with no legal knowledge at all are tossing around this liability excuse with zero comprehension of what they are saying. Or why what they are saying is idiotic.
Some other takes:
PennLive’s David Jones: “Sometimes, you need to win the press conference. And this afternoon, Kevin Warren lost big. He flunked his first major exam. Because of his mealy performance on the Big Ten Network, repeatedly stonewalling simple questions he could’ve handled in plainspoken response, the conference’s official cancellation of fall sports will be received by many as nervous and apprehensive rather than sensible and necessary. Rather than the brave thing to do, it will be perceived as cowardice. It’s not always what you say, it’s how you say it. And the Big Ten’s new commissioner came off like a politician rather than a statesman. Big difference. Huge difference in this particular case.”
USA Today’s Dan Wolken: “It is incredibly absurd, and yet perfectly appropriate for the way the COVID-19 pandemic has played out in America, that the fate of the entire college football season could really come down to believing one set of medical experts over another. University presidents in the Big Ten and the Pac-12 saw the trends, the data and the risks to young athletes of trying to play a season this fall and decided to fold up the tents Tuesday at least until the spring, following earlier decisions by the Mid American Conference and the Mountain West. Meanwhile, university presidents in the SEC, ACC and perhaps the Big 12 have looked at their own set of material from the experts and determined it’s worth pressing forward until something changes their mind. If that doesn’t symbolize the American conundrum at this delicate and polarized moment in history, I don’t know what does. And like everything else that has happened since March, we all deserve better.”
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