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College Football Conferences Won’t All Open At Same Time

NCAA president Mark Emmert has a very tough decision on his hands regarding when, or if, college football will be returning. As time went on, though, he felt like leaving the decision on start dates up to the individual state officials and university presidents.

“Normally, there’s an agreed-upon start date for every sport, every season,” Emmert told ESPN, “but under these circumstances, now that’s all been derailed by the pandemic. It won’t be the conferences that can do that, either. It will be the local and state health officials that say whether or not you can open and play football with fans.

“We already saw the Oregon governor offering her views on what’s likely to happen in September. The Pac-12 can say, ‘Gee, we’d all like to open up on this date,’ but whether or not you can is going to be ultimately up to the state and local health officials and the campus itself making a decision whether or not they want to go forward.”

Wanting Competitive Balance

On Tuesday, many of the Pac-12 football coaches expressed support of an NCAA-mandated start to the season. A couple of days earlier, Penn State head coach James Franklin called on the NCAA to make things easier on everyone by giving some national guidelines that schools should be abiding by.

Washington head coach Jimmy Lake believes that all major college teams should begin a period of six weeks of preparation at the same exact time – to keep the competitive balance fair.

“I’m of the opinion it would be great if the NCAA made a blanket rule for the whole nation of when we would start, and I understand some states may be less hit by this than most. And I’m sure there’s going to be some different opinions on this,” Lake said. “In my opinion, I believe the NCAA should step in and say, ‘OK, here’s the date when everybody can start.'”

However, Emmert’s most recent comments have the exact opposite feeling.

“These are localized decisions,” Emmert said Tuesday. “Local campuses have to decide: Are we opening up, and are we bringing students back to play sports? The NCAA doesn’t mandate that, nor should it. The schools themselves have to make those choices.”

Not In His Hands

In March, the NCAA organized a COVID-19 advisory panel of leading medical, public health, and epidemiology experts to help guide the response of the outbreak. However, the one championship the NCAA doesn’t have authority over is college football.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby does believe the Football Oversight Committee, the college football governing body, could have a part in determining when things get back up and running.

“The Football Oversight Committee will have a role in putting a date on the calendar eventually, to say you can start some sort of return to play on this date, but that may be on three days’ notice,” Bowlsby said. “It may be on two weeks’ notice. It may be more than that. It’s a constantly-evolving environment, and forecasting around it is a fool’s errand.”

Emmert has a formal call with all 32 Division I commissioners at least once a week and talks to individual commissioners on a daily basis. While we’re not sure exactly what the next steps are, Emmert, his staff, and the NCAA’s member institutions are ready to make any necessary changes to make adjustments should they be ready to go quickly.

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