We keep getting nice information coming from the Big Ten’s surrounding decision to ban bankruptcy sports, and it’s not a good idea. There is definitely a case to be made on a path of abundance of caution to beat the season due to a global pandemic, but the process by which the decision was made has come into question.
The latest comes from a report by Sam Mckewon of the Omaha World Herald that got Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos to go on record.
According to Moos, he was optimistic about a Big Ten season that was played when the league announced a schedule only on August 5th. The road map was there and was the one that allowed flexibility in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic.
However, his optimism soon waned when he was made aware by Nebraska Chancellor Ronnie Green of a growing sentiment by university presidents and chancellors to postpone the season.
“As we got closer to the decision, I became less and less confident that we would play,” Moos told the Omaha World Herald.
Moos was kept informed of where things were going because key, veteran athletic directors were not part of extremely important Zoom meetings and further conversations. That included Ohio State’s Gene Smith, one who has already served on several key NCAA boards and decision-making teams.
Instead, according to Moos, the voice of the athletic directors at those meetings was left to one man, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren.
And here’s the tricky part – Warren was aware that every single Big Ten athletic director was in favor of trying to play football in the fall. Moos, Ohio State, Gene Smith, Penny’s Sandy Barbour, and Michigan’s Wade Manuel pressed hardest to do everything the league could to advance, but it was unanimous agreement in play.
“He knew where we were going, and he was the messenger for the presidents and chancellors,” Moos said.
Yet the decision to postpone the fall still occurred in the face of a mountain of support and willingness to play through the ADs. Moos said that happened because things were not discussed with the right people sitting together.
“I knew where our people stood, but I would have liked to have been in the room when they expressed it to the Commissioner and our presidents and chancellors,” Moos said. “The commissioner worked in silos, and the silos were not connected. And finally, that led to varying degrees of communication that was not delivered. “
In the face of an earthquake of criticism and confusion surrounding the Big Ten’s decision, Warren, for his part, agreed that he could have arrived at the decision a little differently.
“What I would have done differently would have been to bring all the parties together,” Warren told Yahoo Sports.
Unfortunately that did not happen and now the league seems to be slowly burning from within. Elders have sent letters to Warren’s office and filed a protest, Ohio State QB Justin Fields has started an online petition to force the Big Ten to reverse his decision, and a league that is normally very united has seen that several managers come out and ask the way about things were handled.
To be honest, Warren was really sent into a no-win situation. Being a newcomer as the leader of one of the most historic and well-known league lectures is hard enough, one that attracts more revenue than any other. To do this in the midst of a worldwide pandemic is to draw the short straw into a stack of short straw.
However, he was hired to do a job. And unfortunately for the Big Ten, the hard lessons being learned and playing for the national media will not reverse the perceptive hit and loss of revenue that will be felt for years to come.
No one is rooting for the other three conferences to hit hard with the pandemic and a bunch of kids getting sick, but that’s probably what it’s going to take for the other three Power Five conferences to cut bait on the football season this fall.
If that happens, then Warren will look like a genius who went against the wishes of his collective athletic community, caught fire and came out the other side.
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