Quote:There are very real discussions about playing a regional schedule if you can get away with it. One Big Ten school in the West Division supposedly has a tentative regional schedule in place, including, according to a source at that school, "multiple games against FCS schools."
Other Big Ten schools are thinking about scrapping the year altogether.
Multiple sources confirmed Michigan plans to go ahead with a football season but thinks that both the Washington and Arkansas State games are definitely gone, and that any school that cannot be bused to there and back on game day will likely be dropped too.
A number of sources contend there will be a few Big Ten schools that do not play football this fall. While there has been nothing officially released - in some part not to cause panic - Michigan (and other programs) are working behind the scenes to schedule Mid-American Conference and Conference USA opponents.
"It's going to be the wild, wild west pretty soon," one prominent coach said. "At some point, more schools will start announcing they will not play this season and we could be left with eight games on our schedule while Ohio State has 11 and Indiana has 10. The schools that decide to play football will be scrambling to fill games and you could see home-and-homes with conference opponents."
So why haven't schools announced yet? In the opinion of numerous sources it's two-fold: 1) it's July and they're waiting until the last-possible moment to make that call 2) no one wants to be first and incur the PR and recruiting hits.
"Say you're a Big Ten school and you announce you won't play in 2020, none of your recruits have signed binding letters yet so you lose an entire recruiting class and you lose all momentum for 2022 class too," a member of Michigan's football community said. "Now you've dug yourself a huge hole and you know there will be football in 2021.
'Trust me, there are at least three to four schools that are definitely considering not playing but they want to be the third or fourth school to announce that, not the first."
Based off everything I've heard, I'll summarize what I expect for 2020:
• I expect Michigan to play football this fall.
• I expect that U-M will play fewer than the 12 games on its schedule and that the trip to Washington and the Arkansas State game will be either canceled outright or replaced by Mid-American Conference opponents.
• I expect Michigan to play at least one home-and-home and potentially two or more with other Big Ten teams, most likely Michigan State, Indiana and Ohio State. I expect Notre Dame to be a very real possibility as a fill-in game because of the location and access via buses.
• I expect at least one Big Ten program not to play football this fall and as many as four or five. I think there is a chance for a four-team Big Ten championship bout to be played in December with the teams staying put in one city/hotel all two weeks.
• I don't expect fans to be in attendance at any sporting event that is not football.
(07-07-2020 09:22 AM)MemTigers1998 Wrote: Might as well just abolish all sports played in cold & flu season. People get sick and die from those as well.
If we applied these travel restrictions, the U of M may not play any conference games. We could play ASU, Ole Miss, MSU, UAB, Vandy, MTSU, and a handful of directional schools.
the conference games and conference championship games should be played IMHO...also local bus in/bus out games like ASU and UT-M should be cleared to be played.
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STR: "SI: B1G schools considering scrapping season, Michigan to cancel UW, ArkSt"
STR: "SI: B1G schools considering scrapping season, Michigan to cancel UW, ArkSt" 
