Live Update Thread: #WeWantToPlay, College Presidents, and More

The last 48 hours or so have been a whirlwind for college athletics and things seem likely to continue at a rapid pace. We’ll update this thread as things happen over the next day or two until the Pac-12 reaches the point of no return.

Saturday Morning

We started off on Saturday morning with the MAC becoming the first FBS conference to officially cancel their football season amid COVID-19 concerns. The non-power conferences were essentially doomed as soon as the power 5 went to conference-only because their football programs are as reliant on checks for buy games as they are from fans being in attendance. However, since the MAC’s geographic footprint is essentially the same as the Big 10’s it put extra pressure on that conference to make a decision.

The Big 10 presidents had a meeting on Saturday but it was supposedly already scheduled for that date and no decision was made at the time.

Sunday Afternoon

ESPN put out a report that the Power 5 was seriously considering doing away with the fall sports schedule altogether. Several ADs across the country (anonymously) voiced the opinion that such a move was inevitable but no one wanted to be that first domino to fall. West Virginia’s AD reasonably put forth that “If it’s canceled, we need to be able to give clear direction at that time, as opposed to saying, ‘We don’t know.” It was clear however that no unified plan existed and the lack of central leadership across the NCAA was predictably biting them in the ass once again.

Sunday Night

Trevor Lawrence has taken seriously his place as the face of college football and put out the sentiment that the players wanted to play but also that they wanted to do so safely. Players across all conferences joined in with the voices of the Pac-12 to some degree to call for the establishment of a college football players association that would be able to represent their interests with the schools in the future. If there is actual representation from all of college football and not just the Pac-12 it significantly improves the chances of something like that actually happening.

For the players that were uncomfortable with the revenue sharing aspects of the #WeAreUnited movement in the Pac-12 the #WeWantToPlay demands fall in line with a larger chunk of college football players and is more likely to see widespread support. Many Huskies have tweeted out the new hashtag including Draco Bynum and Jacob Sirmon.

Jon Wilner brought up a reasonable point about the rush to end the season this week.

Monday Morning

According to Dan Patrick this morning it seems to be a done deal, announced tomorrow, that the Big 10 is cancelling the fall football season. It also appears the Pac-12 will join them tomorrow when they have a meeting of their school presidents. That’s still not 100% official which means of course there’s still no word about what the plan is after that point. You would imagine schools will do their due diligence about postponing the schedule to the spring but then you also have to worry about college students playing 2 seasons worth of football in 8 months on top of the virus likely still being around.

Obviously it will be incredibly disappointing to not have a fall Husky football schedule but things have been trending this way for months. To put together a reasonably safe system takes widespread coordination and college football is one of the least coordinated groups on the planet. This has been an exercise in letting us down easy and it certainly appears like the Pac-12 is going to drop us on our heads when we were still on the 2nd floor.

A reasonable summary of the SEC’s opinion on all of this:

The beginning of the end seems pretty clear right here:

Monday Afternoon

This would certainly be a heck of a plot twist if Nebraska and Iowa which reportedly are the 2 schools who voted against cancelling a fall season in the Big 10 decided to go ahead and try to play in the fall against anyone willing to play them. I’m skeptical it could happen but talk about chaos if there’s a few holdouts (or non-holdouts) from each conference that try to play in the fall against one another and then there ends up being a spring season where now are those teams ineligible and...talk about a headache.

Vorel corrected the previous reporting that all workouts had been cancelled and it seems that only the full team events were cancelled.

Highly recommend the above article. UW Medical Center’s Sports Medicine Cardiologist is one of the primary experts cited throughout the article. Gives insight into the kind of care UW athletes are receiving and why the long-term effects of the virus are the bigger concern for most administrators rather than just the short-term mortality rate.

Monday Night

Tuesday Morning

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We’ll continue to have updates on this thread as they happen and you can find them all right here.