Report: Administrators upset by Big Ten’s ‘covert’ announcement
The Big Ten announced on Thursday that they will be playing a conference-only schedule for college football in the fall. Their announcement reportedly bothered other school administrators.
SI’s Ross Dellenger reported on Thursday that some administrators were “perturbed” by the conference’s announcement, describing it as covert.
Across the country, there are some perturbed administrators at the Big Ten's announcement, which many described as covert.
There's a scheduled FBS commissioners meeting tomorrow.
One source: "Why couldn't they have just waited and until then?"
College football needs a czar.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) July 10, 2020
FBS commissioners are set to meet on Friday, so the thinking is they could have discussed matters with other conferences and worked on possibly a bigger announcement.
The SEC commissioner said in a statement that the conference will continue to discuss things before making a decision.
SEC commish Greg Sankey: “The SEC will continue to meet regularly w/our campus leaders in the coming weeks, guided by medical advisors, to make the important decisions necessary to determine the best path forward related to the SEC fall sports.”
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 9, 2020
The Pac-12 reportedly is expected to go to a conference-only season as well.
Why would the conferences move to a conference-only season? There could be a few reasons.
The non-conference games generally are at the start of the season, so canceling them could give schools a little more time to see how things play out related to the coronavirus. Only playing within a conference could also theoretically limit travel and result in uniformity as far as testing and other health protocol/measures go.