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THE BIG TEN RETURNS
That which could not possibly be revisited, has been.
Pete Thamel of YahooSports.com, usually a leak recipient of negativity, gets to write the return story:
If there’s been a defining theme for this anguished Big Ten summer, it’s been waiting. Waiting for news on the fate of the season. Waiting for answers from a frozen conference office. And, finally, waiting for news on a reversal.
On Wednesday morning, the waiting finally ended. After sources confirmed to Yahoo Sports that the Big Ten will return to play in the fall of 2020, the conference made it official. The league is expected to start the season on Oct. 24, which is scheduled to allow for both a conference title game and a potential spot in the College Football Playoff.
“Our focus with the Task Force over the last six weeks was to ensure the health and safety of our student-athletes. Our goal has always been to return to competition so all student-athletes can realize their dream of competing in the sports they love,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said in a conference statement. “We are incredibly grateful for the collaborative work that our Return to Competition Task Force have accomplished to ensure the health, safety and wellness of student-athletes, coaches and administrators.”
The decision has been expected since the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COPC) met on Sunday night, as optimism had permeated through the league. But as the days went on and information evaporated, the coaches and administrators around the league were frozen in anticipation.
In typical Big Ten fashion this most muddled of summers, it was simultaneously stunning and not surprising at all when the news leaked out over a hot mic by a Nebraska president Ted Carter.
Sources told Yahoo that multiple programs around the league met with their players in the past few days and outlined a plan on how they’d practice and be ready to play by the October dates being reported in the media. But they cautioned that plan hinged on the votes from the Big Ten COPC. That finally happened, as coaching staffs around the league had two nervous days waiting for smoke signals from the Big Ten office.
Wednesday’s news comes more than a month after the same COPC group voted 11-3 to postpone the fall season. The conference doubled down on that nearly a week later when Warren said the Big Ten COPC was “overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will not be revisited.”
The Big Ten was the first major conference to make the decision to postpone the fall and now is the first to reverse it. The Pac-12 followed the Big Ten in postponing but has no intention of following the Big Ten back to the field, as the fires in California and Oregon aren’t allowing those teams to practice. As of now, three of the 10 FBS conferences will not play this fall: the MAC, Pac-12 and Mountain West.
The delay from Sunday’s COPC meeting to today’s announcement came from finalizing details, answering last-minute questions and making sure the messaging about the reversal came across better than the initial messaging. When the Big Ten first announced its decision, Warren came under scrutiny for not sharing enough details.
What changed in less than five weeks? A confluence of medical advancements, fan blowback, political pressure and the successful start of the college football season elsewhere — especially in leagues like the ACC — all contributed to the league reversing course. Sources said that the presence of daily rapid testing, which has led to a successful start in the NFL, will be used in the Big Ten and will be a key part of the league’s messaging why it’s moving forward.
On Sunday’s COPC call, sources told Yahoo Sports that the three different arms of the league’s return to competition task force — medical, scheduling and television — formally presented to all 14 of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors. The key medical voice has been Ohio State head team physician Dr. Jim Borchers, the medical co-chair of the return to competition task force. The presentation was said to be thorough and laid out a clear narrative as to why the league was more equipped to play than it was on Aug. 11.
“Everyone associated with the Big Ten should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities,” Ohio State head physician Dr. Jim Borchers said in a conference statement.
“The data we are going to collect from testing and the cardiac registry will provide major contributions for all 14 Big Ten institutions as they study COVID-19 and attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease among wider communities.”
The league has made the decision to return in steps. The groundwork for Sunday’s meeting was built with an important step on Saturday. Eight of the league’s presidents and chancellors – a group known as the steering committee of the return to competition task force – heard a presentation on the medical advancements since the Big Ten’s initial vote. They agreed to pass it on to the full 14 presidents and chancellors for the vote.
Along with addressing daily rapid testing and ways to mitigate contract tracing, the Big Ten also is expected to unveil new information on myocarditis screening and the league can safely test for myocarditis in the wake of any positive tests.
The question now turns to the ability for schools to get their team prepared to play. Getting physically ready for the season is something that’s weighed heavily on Big Ten coaches. One of the league’s schools – Wisconsin – is on pause because of COVID-19 issues. Another two schools, Maryland and Iowa, just returned from a pause.
How quickly those schools could be ready to play has been a looming issue, especially with the league attempting to return to participate in the College Football Playoff. Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said that Wisconsin should be ready to play, even if they don’t start practicing again until Sept. 24 as scheduled.
“[Coach Paul Chryst] and I are on the same page on this,” Alvarez told Yahoo Sports on Saturday night. “We can have our guys ready. We could have a team ready in three weeks. We feel comfortable with that.”
The fact the Big Ten got to the point where they discussed returning is remarkable. After Warren made the decision Aug. 11 and communicated the reasoning poorly immediately after, there was silence for more than a week from the Big Ten offices. Warren then said eight days later the decision wouldn’t be revisited.
Around that time, pressure began building on all sides – players, parents, coaches, athletic directors, fans, television partners and politicians. Many thought the Big Ten rushed to make a decision, especially after building a nimble schedule that would allow them to push games back and even cancel entire weeks to accommodate the COVID-19-related disruptions that appeared inherent to the season.
A month later – and a lot of waiting – the Big Ten is back on track to play.
The Big Ten’s announces protocols that could produce cancellations:
Football players who test positive for COVID-19 must wait at least 21 days to return to competition, as they will undergo “comprehensive cardiac testing” before being cleared by a cardiologist designated by each university primarily for that purpose. Concerns about myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle caused by viral infections like COVID-19, significantly contributed to the Big Ten’s initial decision to postpone the fall football season.
The Big Ten will use a color-coded system — green, orange and red — for both team positivity rates and population positivity rates.
If the team’s positivity rate exceeds 5% or the population’s positivity rate exceeds 7.5%, the team must pause practice and competition for at least seven days. If the team’s positive rate is between 2-5% or the population’s positivity rate is between 3.5-7.5%, the team “must proceed with caution and enhance COVID-19 prevention.”
So an errant student body could cancel a successfully isolated team.
This:
@realDonaldTrump
Great News: BIG TEN FOOTBALL IS BACK. All teams to participate. Thank you to the players, coaches, parents, and all school representatives. Have a FANTASTIC SEASON! It is my great honor to have helped!!!
And this from attorney Tom Mars who put the heat on the Big Ten with his FOI demands:
@tallanmars
Congrats to the B1G 10 Boys of Fall! Hoping the game ball goes to Justin Fields for being the national voice of “We Want to Play” both for his teammates and all his brothers in the B1G 10. Total respect, Justin.Clapping hands sign #1. … Now go win that Heisman.
And now, the sleeping players and fans of the Pac-12 have awoken with USC players asking California’s iron-fisted ruler, Gavin Newsom, for relief. Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.com:
USC football players are appealing to California Gov. Gavin Newsom to ease public health restrictions, which would allow them to play a fall season.
In a letter posted Tuesday on Twitter, the USC players highlight the Pac-12 Conference’s pledge to bring to each campus daily antigen testing, which provides quick results and “reduces COVID-19 infectiousness by 100%.” The players also refer to the Pac-12’s #WeAreUnited movement, which launched in the summer and focused on health and safety standards but never opposed the chance to play a fall season. The Pac-12 on Aug. 11 postponed its fall sports season, including football, because of concerns around the coronavirus pandemic.
League commissioner Larry Scott and others have expressed optimism about starting competition before the end of the calendar year, especially after reaching a partnership for rapid testing with Quidel Corp. But public health regulations in California and Oregon have prevented six of the league’s 12 teams from practicing or even gathering in large numbers. USC players, including quarterback Kedon Slovis and wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, posted the letter, which notes that, “As California goes, so too does the Pac-12 Conference.”
Several other Pac-12 players have tweeted their support, including Cal starting quarterback Chase Garbers, Oregon wide receiver Mycah Pittman and Utah quarterback Jake Bentley.
“The current reality is that there are too many restrictions imposed by state and local public health officials in California that prevent us from resuming practices and competition,” the USC players’ letter reads. “We cannot practice in groups larger than 12, we cannot gather as a team, and we cannot utilize any of our indoor facilities. From the onset of this pandemic, the Pac-12 has rightfully and responsibly maintained that their decisions would be based on science, and now it appears that the science and technology have turned in our favor of playing.”
The letter notes that the start of both the NFL and college seasons (in other leagues) have left Pac-12 players wondering why they can’t play this fall. A source told ESPN’s Heather Dinich that the Pac-12’s “most aggressive” return plan is targeting a start date in mid-to-late November.
Newsom, who attended Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship, has been an advocate for college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness.
“Governor Newsom, our request of you is that you work with us — urgently and purposefully — to find a path forward for us to resume competitions later this fall so that we can have the same opportunity as other teams around the country to play for a national championship,” the USC players’ letter reads. “We respect the careful and cautious approach you have taken to college athletics, and we have the utmost confidence that we can partner together to quickly develop a plan that allows us to compete in a 2020 fall football season.
“Let’s find a way to say ‘Yes!’ Please let us play.”
Even if Newsom, and his equally severe co-ruler Kate Brown in riot and fire-torn Oregon, were to be persuaded to turn today, Heather Dinich of ESPN.com says the Pac-12 is not ready to fire on all cylinders.
The Pac-12’s “most aggressive” return plan is currently targeting mid-to-late November, according to a source familiar with the league’s discussions.
Earlier this month, the Pac-12 announced its partnership with Quidel Corporation, a manufacturer of FDA-approved rapid tests that will allow the league to test its student-athletes daily for the coronavirus.
While the new testing systems will be on every campus by the end of the month, the league still expects to need a short time to train staff how to use them, and ensure the proper testing protocols are in place.
Schools in the states of California and Oregon still have not been cleared by public health officials to resume contact practices, let alone games. The league’s presidents and chancellors wouldn’t consider a vote to return until that status changes. Ideally, the Pac-12 would like its teams to have six weeks to practice and physically prepare for the season, the source said.
To get to a mid-November start between now and when the tests arrive, the Pac-12 would have to be cleared by public health experts, the source said. Late November could be more realistic considering the double crisis with the pandemic and wildfires that continue to singe the Pacific Northwest.
The conference announced in August that it was postponing all competitive sports through the calendar year, citing the need for “rapid point of care tests” as part of its decision.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott called the purchase of the new tests a “game-changer” and said the availability of rapid testing will allow the conference to consider resuming competitive activities before Jan. 1, 2021.
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