Pac-12 Conference leadership met for several hours Friday to discuss the fate of the 2020 football season.
No decisions were made, but every indicator suggests the league will kick off sometime this fall. The big, looming question is when. An announcement is expected Thursday.
“The Pac-12 CEO Group had an informative and productive meeting earlier today,” the league said in a statement. “We plan to reconvene this coming Thursday, Sept. 24, to make a decision regarding possible return to play prior to Jan. 1. The health and safety of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports will continue to be our No. 1 priority in all of our decision-making.”
In an appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show” earlier Friday, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott was asked about possibly starting on Halloween — one week later than the Big Ten’s restart window but possibly early enough to make the Pac-12 a player in the College Football Playoff.
“I think that would be the most ambitious, maybe a week or two too quick for us,” Scott said. “But somewhere in that ZIP code is when we’re playing, if we’re playing.”
The way the postseason is set up at the moment, the Pac-12 would have to conclude its season by Dec. 19. The CFP selection committee is scheduled to release its final rankings on Dec. 20.
Early November could be the sweet spot for the Pac-12. Bruce Feldman of The Athletic reported that “much of the discussion” in the meeting Friday “was about a plan to start play Nov. 7.”
In that scenario, the regular season would be six games long. Teams conceivably could play a seventh game, with a cross-division opponent to be determined, on the same weekend as the Pac-12 Championship game. The Big Ten reportedly is planning an eight-plus-one schedule with the same structure.
Two questions flow from that premise: (1) Why can’t the Pac-12 start sooner? (2) Would a season of that length be sufficient to merit postseason consideration?
Scott reiterated to Patrick that teams will require a ramp-up period of six weeks. He also indicated that some are further along than others in terms of conditioning.
“In California, they haven’t been in a gym. They haven’t been on a field,” Scott said. “If we’re going to move forward, it depends how quickly we can get back to practice.”
The Pac-12 made “a lot of progress” with public health officials in California and Oregon this week to clear a path to practice and play, Scott said. That was considered the biggest holdup for the league after it procured daily, rapid-result COVID-19 testing from Quidel Corporation earlier this month. Those machines and test kits are expected to be shipped to campuses Monday, Scott said. Arizona began utilizing Quidel’s product in late May.
Starting the ramp-up period Sept. 26 — next Saturday — would give teams six weeks to prepare for a Nov. 7 kickoff.
Assuming the other leagues complete their schedules, or something close to it, the Pac-12 would play the fewest games of any conference. Scott isn’t sure that’s a safe assumption, though.
“I don’t think if you ask any of my fellow commissioners they can tell you how many games their teams are going to play,” Scott told Patrick. “They know what they’re going to TRY to play. But we’ve already seen in the first two weeks every league that’s tried to play has had to postpone games. So no one’s feeling supremely confident at this point, especially those that don’t have daily tests.
“It’s uncharted territory. We don’t know how many games each league is going to play. There are going to be many more differences than we’re normally used to, and I don’t know whether the average is going to be six games or eight games. I don’t think anyone can tell you.”
FBS programs began play on Sept. 3. But more than a dozen scheduled games have been postponed or canceled because of COVID-19 outbreaks.
The Pac-12 and Big Ten announced on Aug. 11 that they were postponing all fall sports until 2021. The Big Ten reversed course Wednesday, citing enhanced safety measures, including daily testing capabilities.
Scott had expressed a desire to align with the Big Ten, its longtime Rose Bowl partner, for a possible winter season starting in January. The circumstances changed when the Big Ten — under intense pressure from fans, players, coaches and even President Trump — re-entered the fray.
USC and UA players wrote letters to California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, asking that restrictions be lifted to allow the four teams in the state — USC, UCLA, Cal and Stanford — to begin larger-scale workouts and full-contact practices. Scott recognized that the tenor had changed in recent days.
“We’ve tried to be transparent about what we’re doing, deliberate, health and safety first,” Scott said. “But at the same time, our student-athletes want to play, our coaches want to play, our fans want to play. So we’ve been committed to explore every possibility to do so — when we felt it was safe and we had appropriate approval.
“If we can provide an opportunity for our student-athletes to play as soon as it’s safe … they want to play. We owe them that, if we can do it.”
Scott later added: “We’ve overcome the major obstacles that we had.”
