The dominoes are falling in rapid succession.
Earlier today, the Big Ten announced that it would postpone the 2020 football season in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Soon after, multiple connected sources indicated that the Pac-12 would follow suit. The Mid-American Conference had already done so. Now, the countdown begins for the SEC, the ACC, and the Big 12.
Catching the coronavirus isn’t the only base concern — the possibility of multiple players contracting Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, has been on the minds of those making the decisions regarding when players will play. Dr. Jonathan Drezner, director of the University of Washington Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology and a sports medicine physician who advises the NCAA on cardiac matters, recently told ESPN that worried about heart issues “made the bar higher” for the decision to move the 2020 season to 2021, “and it could be we don’t get there.”
That is now the case for two of the Power 5 conferences, and it’s hard to see the other three conferences going against that. Not that spring football is a sure thing. Given what has been a pathetic federal response to the pandemic, and wildly divergent state responses, there is absolutely no guarantee of a timeline for a return to normalcy that included college football on Saturdays anytime soon.
When college football does ramp back up, it will be dealing with players who now have a larger and better sense of the power of their own voices.
The recent #WeWantToPlay campaign, which was of course misconstrued by various right-wing activists as a “no-matter-what” desire to play the game sooner than later, was actually a hurried but effective example of athlete activism that has to give a lot of people in the NCAA’s employ a great deal to think about. Those in charge will have to give players a stronger seat at the table when it’s time to decide when to bring football back.
ANd now, with two of the top five conferences out of the picture in the fall, you can expect the dominoes to keep falling.
