Pac-12 approves 10-game blackboard for soccer conference only

The Pac-12 approved a 10-game fall schedule on Friday for the conference only, for soccer to begin on September 26, with “a lot of built-in flexibility,” the conference announced Friday.

Each team will play five games at home and five on the road, and the Pac-12 Championship will now be played on December 18 or 19. The conference title game will take place on a home-hosted model for 2020, featuring the Pac-12 and its partners. Allegiant Stadium and the Raiders, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and MGM Resorts International agree to start hosting the Championship Game at Allegiant Stadium in 2021 for their two-year career in Las Vegas.

Games that cannot be played on their scheduled date can be made up in their rest weeks or in week 12 (December 12). The Pac-12 and Big Ten announced on July 10 that they would play a conference-only schedule, but Friday was the first time the Pac-12 announced the details.

Pac-12 approves the 2020 soccer calendar and plans for fall sports.

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– Pac-12 Conference (@ pac12) July 31, 2020

While the Big Ten and Big 12 have yet to announce their plans, Friday marked the third consecutive day this week that a Power 5 conference made drastic changes to their fall soccer schedules, all with the caveat that it might not. happen at all as the Coronavirus pandemic continues to affect college athletics. On Wednesday, the ACC announced an 11-game model that includes Notre Dame, and the SEC followed suit on Thursday with its change to a conference-only schedule.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott admitted that “it may not be possible” to even play a 10-game schedule before December 19, or that it may take the spring to finish it.

“The same can happen in other markets,” he said. “… We recognize that the best-laid plans may not materialize, whether it is to start on the 26th, play a supplement to a minimum number of games that we believe would be necessary for a college football playoff, and we can begin but we cannot finish , and then we’ll have to adjust. We’ll have to adjust with a spring piece, either to finish or to start, maybe delay the dates for a tiebreak if it’s still possible. There are many, many scenarios still on the table, but we feel like It is critical at this point to be able to give some clarity to our plan. “

When asked on Friday what his confidence level is this season, Scott replied, “I don’t know.” While the Major League Baseball continues to grapple with outbreaks that stop the schedule, Scott said he expects the same this fall in college football.

“There is no bubble and a bubble would not be appropriate for college sports and for our campuses,” Scott told reporters at a media webinar on Friday afternoon. “These are students, and they cannot be quarantined or isolated in a bubble, in the same way that professional sports do … It is one of the reasons why it is so important to develop flexibility in the schedule. If there is an outbreak on the team, we’re going to hope it’s a real possibility, and if that happens, especially with 14-day quarantine periods currently for anyone who is in close contact, that will require reprogramming of a game.

“And therefore we have two opportunities for each team to potentially reschedule or delay the start. We realize that there are some markets that don’t have the necessary rules right now to start on time. We have to make sure that ‘ We have a safe and robust training ground to be able to play on time. If a team cannot start on time, we have the rest week to reschedule … either in the rest week or this week of December 10 that we have. “

With its start delayed, and the coronavirus still increasing in its geographic footprint, the Pac-12 will enter the “enhanced summer access” period as early as August 3, after the start of its official training camp on August 17. August. (This year’s NCAA-approved official practice schedule began the improved 20-hour period on July 24, and summer camp can officially begin on August 7 for any team that still opens on Labor Day weekend. ).

Oregon State Senior Associate Sports Director Dr. Doug Aukerman said it is difficult to determine a number of positive cases that would cause a game to be canceled.

“You can’t just say, ‘It’s a certain number of players,'” he said. “Because if you have a couple of infections and they come from different sources, and they’re happening a day or two before the game, maybe you really don’t have control of the virus transmission in that case, and you need to pause. It’s a couple of cases earlier in the week and they’re both related and you can contact and trace back to where they were, that’s a much safer environment and situation. So it’s hard to find an easy solution, quick number. If it were, everyone They would have had that at every conference. “

Not all Pac-12 schools have been licensed to begin even the Enhanced Access Period, which is primarily strength and conditioning, movie review, and tours.

“We have been talking about this for five months, so we will have a plan based on what we are allowed to do, based on our local medical and government officials,” said Stanford coach David Shaw. “We’ll find a way to make it work. There are things we can do now that we couldn’t do two weeks ago, and hopefully in a couple of weeks there will be things we can do that we can’t do. Now.”

The new calendar features rivals Arizona at Arizona State and USC at UCLA in the first week instead of the traditional regular season finale.

“We realize right now, those are real critical points, and the authorities and required approvals are not there yet,” Scott said of Arizona and California. “By putting them in the first week, in the event that these teams in each of those two markets end up not being possible, they become very easy to reschedule. Each of them could reschedule the rest week on the calendar a few weeks later, or the week of December we left. We are going with our eyes wide open. “