The Big 10 announced today that the conference will be going to a conference only schedule this year for all fall sports, including football. I don’t know how much ASU was going to be paid for their road trip to play at Michigan on September 19th, but I bet it was a lot and that game will not be happening.

It sure didn’t take long for a shoe to drop after the Ivy announcement yesterday!

As the article in the demgaz says, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Ohio State AD is not at all optimistic there will be football this fall. And if the NCAA goes to a spring schedule, how will that affect traditional spring sports? How does a mid-major staff a baseball game, basketball game and a football game all on the same day. And throw in a track meet on top of that. Wow.

(07-10-2020 08:52 AM)ez272 Wrote:  How does a mid-major staff a baseball game, basketball game and a football game all on the same day. And throw in a track meet on top of that. Wow.

And if high school does that, they are already nearing a crisis in being able to get enough officials, and if they double down on fall and spring sports, that will only make things worse.

(07-10-2020 11:11 AM)MICHAELSPAPPY Wrote:  

(07-10-2020 08:52 AM)ez272 Wrote:  How does a mid-major staff a baseball game, basketball game and a football game all on the same day. And throw in a track meet on top of that. Wow.

And if high school does that, they are already nearing a crisis in being able to get enough officials, and if they double down on fall and spring sports, that will only make things worse.

The question is, “Worse than what?”. That is what sports overall are struggling with right now. Finding officials, etc., is a small problem compared with feeding a pandemic where athletes, coaches, fans, etc can spread the virus to untold numbers of vulnerable people, most likely older relatives. At some point, we as a nation have got to take this seriously and understand that business or usual, or even anything close to to it may not be possible until the virus is under control.

I hate it for the kids (student athletes) who have worked their butts off for years to earn a college scholarship. But if college presidents and AD's had the kid's interest (and health) at heart, they would cancel Fall sports right now. Money is the thing driving the big conferences, TV networks, etc. to try and play ball this fall, not common sense. It's a sad situation. I really thought things would significantly improve over the summer and was worried about a "second wave" in the Fall shutting down college sports again. But, it is clear that because of our bungling of the pandemic this is going to continue to get worse until it burns out because of herd immunity or we come up with a vaccine. Most every other country will have to cope with a second wave at some point. We simply have a flood that will continue unabated because of our complete lack of leadership.

By the way, ASU was supposed to get 1.8 million from Michigan. Not a bad payday. I assume Michigan will still have to pay ASU a nice chunk of change, if they actually go ahead and play their conference season. If they play conference games, there is no real reason not to play ASU, other than they don't want to pay the cash since they won't have 100K+ in the stands. There will be a lot of lawsuits and court fights over this, unless Big 10 schools are willing to make a fair compensation to the schools they have cancelled.

(07-10-2020 07:51 PM)mjs Wrote:  By the way, ASU was supposed to get 1.8 million from Michigan. Not a bad payday. I assume Michigan will still have to pay ASU a nice chunk of change, if they actually go ahead and play their conference season. If they play conference games, there is no real reason not to play ASU, other than they don't want to pay the cash since they won't have 100K+ in the stands. There will be a lot of lawsuits and court fights over this, unless Big 10 schools are willing to make a fair compensation to the schools they have cancelled.

I am confidant that compensation will be paid the ASU, just not 1.8 million. But there is some logic to the conference only model for fall football. If a team has a virus spike that prevents them from playing, the conference can adjust the schedule on the fly since they control it all. I hope that model works, but we’ll see.