2020 NCAA Football

Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat

has big, douchey shoulders
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member

kenneycb

Hates Goose Island Beer; Loves Backdoor Play
SoSH Member
Dec 2, 2006
16,090
Tuukka's refugee camp
There was a reason Urban was unable to retire and un-retire and retire again and not get his chosen one (Addazio) the Florida job. Dan Mullen left a year too early to go to MSU and allowed me to witness the Coach Boom era in Gainesville.

This has allowed me to enjoy his BC era more than I should have.

FYI, this guy was the same guy walking your sidelines BC Nation. He didn't "change" on his way to Colorado.

Speaks volumes for the BC administration and athletic department. Have they purged?
BC fans have hated him for years. We're well aware of his shittiness.
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
Sure, everyone is leaving an out. But they didn't cancel, which was the rumor.
Not yet. Everything is fluid. There should be a decision today whether or not to cancel the other fall sports championships. If they do get cancelled, FBS football would look like huge hypocrits for letting an obvious money grab keep going versus the health and safety of the student-athletes and staff.
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
Based on his sources, Pete Thamel sees the process for FBS football as dragging it out over the next few weeks but his sense is that there won't be football in the fall. He cites the FB post by the mother of the IU football player detailing his COVID experience as resonating with campus presidents. His take is that the schools presidents like all of us don't enough about the virus and don't want to risk players' long-term health after hearing about the IU player.

Other highlights
--Big Ten president Kevin Warren and a doctor had a 2.5 hour Zoom call last night with 2 player reps(1 football player and 1 non-football player) from each Big Ten school to discuss COVID-19 protocols and testing plans. No concrete answers were given to the players' questions
--Pac 12 presidents had an unscheduled Zoom call last night about athletics.
--No moves are expected for a few weeks, but the industry is gauging who will be the first conference to pull the plug. The Pac-12 and Big Ten are the favorites.
--Another big topic is if anyone in FBS will follow James Madison and Elon's move of trying to play an independent schedule.

https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football-season-facing-long-odds-you-can-feel-the-tidal-wave-coming-163008561.html
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
Big 10 announced that they will not progress to padded practices until they get further evaluation on if it’s safe to proceed. Wisconsin has cancelled practice until Monday because the players had too many questions about their safety.

The conference presidents are meeting today and Pete Thamel says there is support for moving play until the spring.
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
View: https://twitter.com/PeteThamel/status/1292590760253153280


Commissioners of the Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting on Sunday, as there is growing concern among college athletics officials that the upcoming football season and other fall sports can't be played because of the coronavirus pandemic, sources told ESPN.

Several sources have indicated to ESPN that Big Ten presidents, following a meeting on Saturday, are ready to pull the plug on its fall sports season, and they wanted to gauge if commissioners and university presidents and chancellors from the other Power 5 conferences -- the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC -- will fall in line with them.

Sources told ESPN that a vast majority of Big Ten presidents have indicated that they would vote to postpone football season, hopefully to the spring. A Big Ten official confirmed to ESPN that no official vote took place during Saturday's meeting.

"It doesn't look good," one Power 5 athletic director said.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29629669/power-5-talking-no-fall-football
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
SoSH Member
Oct 31, 2013
72,462
If the Big Ten do cancel, I give it a 95% chance the Pac-12 will cancel as well. And then it just creates too much litigation risk for the other 3 conferences. If the other 2 P5 conferences (B1G and PAc12) and all the DII and DIII football seasons are canceled, just seems like any plaintiffs (for when the student-athletes get sick and have long-term damage, not if) would win the duty of care issue against the ACC/Big12/SEC and then it would be a fun fight for consent (being unpaid scholarship athletes).
 

CFB_Rules

Member
SoSH Member
Nov 29, 2016
1,603
View: https://twitter.com/PeteThamel/status/1292590760253153280


Commissioners of the Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting on Sunday, as there is growing concern among college athletics officials that the upcoming football season and other fall sports can't be played because of the coronavirus pandemic, sources told ESPN.

Several sources have indicated to ESPN that Big Ten presidents, following a meeting on Saturday, are ready to pull the plug on its fall sports season, and they wanted to gauge if commissioners and university presidents and chancellors from the other Power 5 conferences -- the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC -- will fall in line with them.

Sources told ESPN that a vast majority of Big Ten presidents have indicated that they would vote to postpone football season, hopefully to the spring. A Big Ten official confirmed to ESPN that no official vote took place during Saturday's meeting.

"It doesn't look good," one Power 5 athletic director said.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29629669/power-5-talking-no-fall-football
So brave. Such leadership. “We know what the right thing to do is...but we want to make sure other people will come with us if we do it.”
 

genoasalami

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 4, 2006
2,579
If the SEC is the only conference to play football this fall, maybe Clemson can apply for a one-year loan deal to the SEC from the ACC.
The big problem with having only one conference play is that if there is an outbreak on a team and someone gets really sick with say a heart issue...then the league/team is in big trouble. Imagine the litigation. "Why did you proceed with a football season Mr SEC commissioner when the rest of the Power 5, Division 2 and 3 apparently understood the risk?"
 

Greg29fan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 14, 2005
20,484
NC
"Establish universal mandated health and safety procedures and protocols to protect college athletes against COVID-19..." is complete nonsense right from the get-go.

Simply playing the game of football violates basically every known protocol for avoiding COVID-19.

The only way sports have been able to avoid COVID-19 is playing in a bubble setting, which is not possible in college athletics as they currently operate. I don't blame the players for wanting to play, and I am extremely sympathetic to their plight to get a collective voice, but they don't seem to grasp the logistical issues and the liability that colleges are going to have from this.
 

HriniakPosterChild

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 6, 2006
14,841
500 feet above Lake Sammammish
Or perhaps they do understand and are saying the only diplomatic thing that they can.

“We want to play and we want to be safe from COVID-19.”

(Alas, you have specified an over-constrained system.)

“Oh, I see. In that case, we’ll take safe from COVID-19.”
 

Average Reds

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 24, 2007
35,330
Southwestern CT
Or perhaps they do understand and are saying the only diplomatic thing that they can.

“We want to play and we want to be safe from COVID-19.”

(Alas, you have specified an over-constrained system.)

“Oh, I see. In that case, we’ll take safe from COVID-19.”
Lawrence tweeted out propaganda about how people will be equally at risk if they don't play. Forgive me if I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt in terms of this being a diplomatic initiative.

Edit: I realize that we may be talking about two different things - I agree with you about the statement sent out by players. Lawrence's comments just rankled me.
 
Last edited:

Bernie Carbohydrate

writes the Semi-Fin
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 2, 2001
4,047
South Carolina via Dorchestah
Trevor Lawrence is taking a 100 million dollar gamble here. He's assured his draft position. Get an agent. Sign up a personal trainer. Get a big insurance policy. Prep for the NFL.

Be smart, young man - - Dabo doesn't give a damn about your long term future.
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
Dan Patrick/Pat Forde reported that this AM. Two outliers were Nebraska and Iowa, I believe.
See you later, college football.

The Big Ten has voted to cancel the 2020 college football season in a historic move that stems from concerns related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, multiple people with knowledge of the decision confirmed to the Free Press.

The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the decision. A formal announcement is expected to Tuesday, the sources said.

The presidents voted, 12-2, Sunday to end the fall sports in the conference. Only Nebraska and Iowa voted to play, Dan Patrick said on his radio show Monday.
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/2020/08/10/big-ten-football-cancels-season-michigan-michigan-state/3332277001/
 
Last edited:

Ale Xander

Hamilton
SoSH Member
Oct 31, 2013
72,462
No link but I was just told the Big 10 voted 12-2 to cancel the season.
Right along party lines, what a shock. Although PSU would have voted to keep going too, had they not reportedly had an early donation deadline, screwing out fans/donors.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
SoSH Member
Oct 31, 2013
72,462
There is no way Duke and Wake would vote to play, they don't make enough on it and other reasons concerning reputation and size . GA Tech, Louisville (positives) and Syracuse should join them too. If they can get BC, UNC and UVA to join, that's enough, right? No super majority needed? Do public schools enjoy less or more legal protections?

I can see Clemson, FSU, and VT holding out as long as possible.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,059
Hingham, MA
Harbaugh's arguments are all fair, but the problem is when everyone returns to campus, classes resume, and social activities resume. It's not too hard to be quarantined in a training camp type environment. Once school starts, it changes everything.
 

RedOctober3829

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
55,299
deep inside Guido territory
Harbaugh's arguments are all fair, but the problem is when everyone returns to campus, classes resume, and social activities resume. It's not too hard to be quarantined in a training camp type environment. Once school starts, it changes everything.
He's in his own little bubble as are most coaches who are advocating to play. Their heads are in the sand and not paying attention to the whole situation at hand.
 

IdiotKicker

Member
SoSH Member
Nov 21, 2005
10,785
Somerville, MA
They aren’t cancelling the season because they’re worried about COVID. They cancelling the season because players rightly balked at the liability waivers schools or conferences wanted to get them to sign, and the schools want nothing to do with the potential for liability claims from players who have the potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of their career.

The NCAA, in not wanting to go the bubble route, because it would require them to classify players as employees, effectively won the battle but lost the war. Yes, they didn’t have to classify players as employees this year. But now you’ve opened players’ eyes to the fact that the system was set up such that billions are at stake, and schools want players to sign waivers so they aren’t on the hook for multi-million dollar claims caused by a disease with unknown long-term consequences. And the players rightly said, “No, if you really want us to play, you’ve gotta give us some protection here.” Schools don’t want to do that, and so they’re going to blow up the season but the toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube here.

I want to go a little deeper though into how badly the NCAA misplayed this:
  • Building a bubble, either for a conference or P5 as a whole would have required paying for space for playing fields and living arrangements for players, most likely off-campus.
  • If you’re removing players from campus and giving them compensation in the form of housing, meals, testing, etc simply so they can go play football, without attending classes, then there’s a very clear line that gets drawn in terms of whether they still fulfill the “student” portion of ”student-athlete”.
  • As such, if a freshman next year says, “I want pay equal to what each member of the team implicitly received last year simply to play football”, it becomes a really challenging argument to fight.
  • While it is true that in today’s climate, football players still get all kinds of free stuff and access to buildings and equipment other students don’t get, this all happens on-campus while classes are ongoing, so there’s some cover.
  • It’s it’s just, “Go to bubble, play football”, there’s no cover.
The NCAA decided they preferred to try to maintain cover in order to classify athletes as amateurs, rather than build a bubble. They made a bet that COVID would be a minimal risk by this point, and they tried to win this year while keeping the system intact. Instead, they get no season this year, and now players realize all of this and are talking about unionizing (which they still probably can’t fully do because of public state universities co-mingling with private ones in conferences), and you’ve also now spent all summer telling them how important their sport is to the country and towns that are dependent on it.

I don’t know what P5 football looks like a few years down the road, but it’s not going to be what it was previously. This is Curt Flood fighting the reserve clause. He may not have won, but he changed the landscape for those who came after him, and I think that’s what we’re on the verge of here.