Welcome to #Pac12AfterOctober.
The Pac-12 Conference announced Thursday that it will play football in 2020 after all. After the league revealed it would have access to daily antigen testing for the coronavirus – and the Big Ten proclaimed its return last week – it became inevitable that the Pac-12 would lift its postponement of football and other sports. It became more a matter of “when” than “if.”
The “when” part really was the only suspense Thursday, and it remains the most interesting aspect of the announcement.
The Pac-12 season will launch a seven-game season on Friday, Nov. 6 – later than any conference that has released kickoff plans.
The Pac-12 announced Sept. 24, 2020 that the conference will start football games for the 2020 season in November and determined a start date for men's & women's basketball seasons. Video created by Star sports producer Alec White.
Since 1931, the first year such records were kept, the latest the Arizona Wildcats have started a football season was Oct. 13. That happened in 1945. World War II officially ended about six weeks earlier. After not fielding a team the previous two years, the UA played five games in ’45. The Wildcats went 5-0, outscoring their opponents 193-12.
The Pac-12’s timeline is as good a place to start as any as we ask and answer questions about version 3.0 of the ’20 season.
Why not start sooner?
Michael Schill, president of the University of Oregon and chair of the Pac-12 CEO Group, bristled at the notion that the league is operating from “behind.”
“I don’t think we’re behind,” Schill said during a video news conference Thursday evening. “I think we are acting deliberately. We are acting in the students’ best interests. We waited until we were able (to) if not ensure (then at least) protect their health and safety.
“Compared to the Big Ten, the regulatory frameworks of the West Coast are different. Most if not all of the government entities that the Big Ten is working under permitted practice and play, whereas two of our major state governments did not (California and Oregon). That all came clear over the past week.
“I think we are doing what we should be doing, and we’re doing it under a schedule that makes sense.”
All that being said, the Pac-12 spent considerable time discussing the possibility of starting a week earlier – Oct. 30 or 31. That would have enabled the league to play eight games, assuming no postponements, cancellations or bye weeks.
But as Commissioner Larry Scott said, the league was “committed to making sure we had the full six weeks of ramp-up time that was recommended by our football working group.” He also noted the preponderance of injuries in the NFL and said they might be the result of “some of the processes and training (being) shortchanged.”
The conference also was committed to moving forward as one, thereby eliminating the concept of having some teams start Oct. 30-31 and the others the following week.
Shortly after the Pac-12’s news conference, the Mountain West Conference announced it was lifting its postponement. Despite having schools in the Pac-12 footprint and facing some of the same obstacles with state and local health authorities, the MWC announced it would play an eight-game schedule beginning Oct. 24.
When will the schedule come out, and what will it look like?
The structure has been determined; the week-by-week specifics are still being hashed out. Scott said the schedule is the league’s “next step” and that it likely would be announced “by next week.”
Each team will play one game against each of its five divisional foes, plus one predetermined crossover game and one that’s yet to be determined. The latter will take place on the weekend of the Pac-12 Championship Game, which is scheduled for Dec. 18.
For Arizona, its five divisional opponents are Arizona State, Colorado, UCLA, USC and Utah. While the identity of the Wildcats’ first North Division opponent will be known when the schedule is revealed, the identity of the second is expected to be based on the order of finish for the first six games.
The crossover game will count in determining the title-game combatants, even though that will result in some teams having harder (or easier) schedules than others.
The overall schedule must be coordinated with the Pac-12’s television partners, ESPN and Fox. Only a handful of the 42 games are expected to air on the Pac-12 Networks.
When will the Wildcats start practice?
Aside from a handful of brief stoppages - including having this past week off - the Cats have been “practicing” since summer. They’re just going to be able to do more now.
Like other teams in the Pac-12, the UA had been limited to 12 hours per week. That included five hours of on-field instruction with coaches, plus meetings and weightlifting.
Now, the Wildcats can ramp up their preparation. They can shift to 20 hours a week for the next two weeks with an accompanying increase in physical activity. The expanded workweek is expected to start Monday after meetings with players and parents Sunday.
An even more rigorous training-camp schedule will begin 29 days before the first game. So if they’re opening Nov. 7, the Cats will begin training camp Oct. 9. If they’re part of the Nov. 6 slate, they’ll start Oct. 8. Either way, it will be a true “fall camp.”
What obstacles remain for the conference?
Dr. Doug Aukerman – Oregon State senior associate athletic director, sports medicine, and chair of the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health & Well-Being Initiative – cautioned against assuming everything will go smoothly from this point forward.
“We need to remind everyone that we are at a starting point again,” Aukerman said. “We need to continue to be diligent.”
Although the governmental-clearance issues in California and Oregon seem to have been resolved, or very nearly so, campuses and communities continue to battle COVID-19 outbreaks. Earlier Thursday, Boulder County, Colorado, put a halt to all gatherings of 18- to 22-year-olds for the next two weeks because of a spike in cases. That could put the Colorado football team behind its peers.
“We will work with our public health officials to comply with the new public health order and be part of the community solution in controlling the spiking cases so we can resume team activities as soon as possible,” CU athletic director Rick George told reporters.
Scott said the Pac-12 is entering the season “humbly” and acknowledged that “there could be interruptions.” Other leagues have been hit with postponements and cancellations totaling more than 20 as of Friday afternoon. The Pac-12 left itself no margin for error by starting Nov. 6-7 and ending Dec. 18-19. The schedule features no open dates.
Schill said a combination of factors – including positivity rates, total number of cases and community spread – could lead the Pac-12 to “pull the plug or pause for a while.”
Each institution also must get its testing operation up and running. Every school was supposed to receive its readers and test kits from Quidel Corporation this week. But it will take time to train campus medical personnel on how to use them, how to maximize efficiency for large-scale testing and to troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
The hope is that the daily testing regimen will mitigate the problems other conferences have encountered.
What else besides science and data drove the Pac-12’s decision?
Scott and Schill implied that student-athletes played a substantial role, even though none was involved in the actual vote.
Scott said the league took “a lot of feedback along the way” from its student-athletes. When asked about the non-championship participants getting a seventh game, Scott said: “The student-athletes’ desires have a lot to do with this. They want as meaningful as season as possible.”
After the league decided not to vote on a restart last week, Schill spoke with students, faculty and others at Oregon. He said he was struck by the passion shown by two groups of student-athletes with whom he met.
“They were so desirous of going back to practice and play,” Schill said. “This is something they dream of, that they want for their future.
“COVID-19 has taken so much away. I didn’t want to take this away from them.”
Schill added that the universities not only have an obligation to protect their students but to “help them fulfill their ambitions.” The Pac-12, he concluded, is “balancing both.”
What about the College Football Playoff?
Scott, a member of the CFP Management Committee, said there is no minimum-game requirement to qualify for the CFP. However, it will be difficult for a Pac-12 team to get a bid playing fewer games than candidates from other conferences.
Even when the playing field is supposedly level, the Pac-12 has lagged behind its peers. The league has sent only two teams to the Playoff in its six years of existence.
Scott didn’t seem concerned.
“There are written protocols,” he said. “It’s well beyond the eye test. The committee’s job is to pick the four best teams. This year there will just be more divergence in the number of games.”
Scott said he hasn’t pushed for an expansion of the four-team playoff, even though it would benefit his constituents.
“There’s really no serious momentum around expansion,” he said.
Nor has there been any known effort to push back the Playoff, which is scheduled to start Jan. 1. The only concession so far: Moving the release of the final rankings to Dec. 20.
