Despite resistance from some big-name coaches, Big Ten cancels all fall sports, including football
League will continue to assess of pushing some sports back to the spring, which could bode well for second-year coach Mike Locksley in his effort to rebuild his program
Maryland coach Mike Locksley directs team through its first practice Friday in College Park. (Photo courtesy of Maryland athletics.)
After much debate and some pressure being applied for a few of the league’s high-profile football coaches, the Big Ten announced Tuesday plans to cancel all fall sports for the 2020-21 season because of continuing concerns with keeping athletes safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision follows similar calls by both the Mid-American Conference, the first Football Bowl Subdivision league to cancel fall sports, as well as the Mountain West. The Pac-12 is expected to follow the Big Ten’s lead, thought conferences such as the ACC, SEC and Big 12 could wind up trying to play their respective seasons.
The Big Ten is not ruling out the possibility of moving some sports - including football - to the spring, but will continue to monitor the situation. The league is also not ruling out the possibility that all sports will be canceled during the 2020-21 academic year.
“The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” first-year Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement.
ESPN reported Monday that Warren’s wish to postpone football until the spring, and possibly cancel it outright, came after five Big Ten players who contracted COVID-19 were found to have developed serious a heart problem. Several outlets reported over the weekend that Big Ten presidents voted overwhelmingly to cancel fall sports.
“As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall,” Warren said.
“While I know our decision today will be disappointing in many ways for our thousands of student-athletes and their families, I am heartened and inspired by their resilience, their insightful and discerning thoughts, and their participation through our conversations to this point.”
When word got out about the reported vote by the presidents, the Big Ten put out a statement that no vote had been taken. Tuesday’s meeting was precipitated by the fact that four coaches - Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, Penn State’s James Franklin, Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Nebraska’s Scott Frost - came out strongly about playing.
This, despite at least six Big Ten schools having had shut down workouts this summer before regular practices began with minimal contact on Friday. At least two of the coaches, Harbaugh and Frost, said that athletes were safer being on campus than at home with their families.
Of course, at the root of this debate is money.
At places like Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State, where home games attract crowds of more than 100,000 and fans start planning now for trips to Pasadena or Miami or wherever the College Football Playoffs are scheduled to be played, many believe that nothing good will come from a quiet fall.
Frost, who has struggled to rebuild Nebraska since taking over in 2017, believes that as well and was quoted as saying Monday that the Cornhuskers will find other opponents if the Big Ten shuts down in the fall. There is also the possibility that Big Ten players could transfer to schools conferences that will try to play their seasons.
“Our University is committed to playing no matter what, no matter what that looks like and how that looks. We want to play no matter who it is or where it is,” Frost said.
Even for the have-nots such as Maryland and Rutgers, the benefits from the league’s lucrative television contract that contributed to each of the Big Ten’s 14 members grossing more than $100 million last year in revenue can’t be ignored as their seemingly bottomless coffers begin to dry up.
Yet in terms of the timetable for rebuilding second-year coach Mike Locksley’s team, another few months without playing a single game is not a horrible thought. Consider the alternative: a team already lacking in depth, experience and talent playing against a 10-game schedule that includes six opponents ranked in the preseason and no gimmes.
Also think of it this way: if the league postpones play until the spring, whether that means in January or February, or if the college games can’t play until the fall of 2021 (which now seems like the worst-case scenario, but at this rate, who knows?) Locksley will have likely amassed more talent relative to the competition than any Maryland team in recent memory.
If the Big Ten can figure out how to get back on the field safely by early 2021, both of Maryland’s two scholarship quarterbacks, sophomore transfer Taulia Tagovailoa and redshirt freshman Lance LeGendre, will have had more time familiarizing themselves with the playbook and possibly calling plays, albeit most of it done virtually.
Redshirt freshman Lance LeGendre is one of two scholarship quarterbacks in camp. (Photo courtesy of Maryland athletics)
Some of the six players whom Locksley had identified last Friday as opting out because of their concerns over contracting COVID-19 might have decided that enough progress has been made in developing a safe and effective vaccine or at least in coming up with a treatment to help those who get sick to recover quickly.
As for the seventh player sitting out a fall schedule, tight end Chig Okonkwo might be healthy enough to play in the spring after being held out for an undisclosed medical condition.
A spring season might actually be to Maryland’s benefit in other ways I’ve previously stated.
It will give Locksley and his staff more free time to continue putting together a historically good recruiting class for 2021 that is currently ranked 18th overall and fourth in the Big Ten, according to 24/7 Sports.
Some of those prospects might even be able to reclassify from 2021 to 2020, and enroll for the spring semester, with hopes of getting on the field.
As difficult as the 10-game all-conference schedule appeared when it was released last week - with a road opener at Iowa being added to a slate already deemed the toughest in both the Big Ten and among Football Bowl Subdivision teams - it might be a little more reasonable as star players at opposing schools opt out to protect their NFL draft status.
Even if the six Maryland players who opted out for the fall remain on the sidelines, it doesn’t seem that their loss will make as big a dent to Maryland’s chances compared to others such as Penn State linebacker Michah Parsons, Michigan State offensive tackle Jordan Reid and Minnesota’s all-Big Ten receiver, Rashod Bateman.
Other big names are likely to join them once the move to spring becomes official and some might even transfer to schools in the SEC, ACC and Big 12 if those leagues decide to play in the fall.
The loss of a fall season won’t be without its casualties, particularly from an economic side.
Just as Stanford did earlier this summer by cutting 11 sports from an athletic department that fielded 36 men’s and women’s teams, just as other schools have done by trimming a handful of teams due to the revenue losses expected during the pandemic, Big Ten schools certainly won’t be immune to such belt-tightening.
Whether it also means furloughs, permanent pay cuts or in the worst-case scenario, layoffs for coaches and other academic department personnel, every university in the country will be affected, just as every university will be impacted with fewer students enrolling and or living on campus in the fall.
Still, playing football this fall makes no sense, whether it was at Maryland or Nebraska, whether it was in a “hot zone” where too many people were still not wearing masks and not properly socially distancing or in those rare places in the U.S. where the numbers were reasonably low and most were following the CDC guidelines.
Which is why what the Big Ten made the right call. Who knows, a few years from now when life hopefully returns to some sort of normalcy, Maryland football fans might point to the fall of 2020 as to when Locksley and the Terps finally started to turn things around in College Park.