Pac-12 cancels all sports via Jan. 1. It’s ‘disappointing news for our program’ says Uyle football coach Kyle Whittingham.

Whether it was the Pacific Coast Conference, Pac-8, Pac-10 or Pac-12, the league has played football since 1916 every fall.

Through world wars and any number of global or domestic events between and after, the leading collegiate athletics conference in the Western United States has continued.

The Pac-12 announced Tuesday afternoon that not only will it not play in the bankruptcy sport by 2020, but that it will postpone all sports through at least Jan 1, 2021.

The vote by Pac-12 presidents and chancellors on Tuesday morning to expel was unanimous, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott revealed at the top of a Zoom call with reporters following the league’s announcement.

“This decision was made after consultation with athletic directors, our coaches, football working groups and with the Pac-12 COVID-19 Medical Advisory Committee, which expressed its concern about progress with contact practices,” Scott said of the call. “Enough questions and concerns were raised, and answers we needed more time to find that we did not feel comfortable moving forward.”

Scott also made clear what the league, like the University of Utah, has been up to in recent weeks as the forecast for a college football season has diminished – that all scholarships for influential student-athletes will be guaranteed.

“We knew for a while that this was a possibility,” Uyle football coach Kyle Whittingham said in a statement. “However, it is still disappointing news for our program, our fans and especially our student-athletes. We respect the guidance of the Pac-12 Medical Advisory Committee and the decision made today by the Pac-12 CEO Group. ”

Of Utah’s three UBS programs, the Utes no longer have a football season, as does Utah State, which saw the Mountain West postponed on Monday. Independent BYU is down to three scheduled games. The situation of the Cougars became more tense on Monday as three MW teams were on their schedule.

The Pac-12 decision came on the heels of the 14-team, 11-state Big Ten – which has been playing football every year since 1896 – and decided to drop sports earlier Tuesday afternoon.

“We’ve been discussing this for a while and we knew there was a parallel track with the Big Ten discussing this as well,” said President Michael Schill of the University of Oregon about the Zoom call. “We feel good about this decision, we would have made this decision without the Big Ten. We respect the institutions in the Big Ten, many of them have the same values ​​as we have. We are glad they are joining us. ”

Both conferences hope to play football in the spring, but logistics and details of how a spring season would come together are unknown. Scott said Tuesday that the Pac-12 will allow schools to continue practicing through 20 hours per week of mandatory activity for the time being.

“Our attention will continue to focus on providing the academic, emotional and physical well-being of our student-athletes,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in a statement. “They will continue to prepare for their upcoming academic semester, and they will continue to have the same access to our first-class medical care, mental health care, academic support, nutrition and food and scholarship grants.”

The team doctor for the Utes and Jazz, Petron revealed that a group of Pac-12 medical advisors, including himself, presented a document to Scott stating that the board recommended “to stop contact and competing activities at this time.”

Petron further stated Monday that the document, which is now publicly available, outlines criteria needed to move forward with competition. Specifically, daily new cases per 100,000 in a given community and the percentage of positive tests in a given community are closely monitored.

Anything more than 7.5% in terms of positive tests, per Pac-12 medical advisors, qualifies as “red.” This would be the recommendation to test as often as daily. A move to 5-7.5% would yield a recommendation to test every other day. Less than 5% and cases per 100,000 that fall to 30 or below would mean testing every three days, or maybe even just weekly.

The state of Utah’s seven-day rolling average of positive tests through the release of Tuesday’s COVID-19 numbers stood at 8.3%, well within the “red” recommendation of Pac-12 Medical Advisory Bureau.

Furthermore, Pac-12 physicians recommend that athletes be tested within 24 hours of competition to ensure that they are not infected while competing.

Pac-12 doctors advise for a stop flight in the face of what other Power Five medical personnel are saying. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Tuesday morning on The Dan Patrick Show that his medical advisory group said, “Yes, we can move forward.”

ACC medical advisory group chairman Dr Cameron Wolfe, a specialist in Duke infection diseases, made similar statements to the Sports Business Journal on Tuesday morning indicating that the league would advance.

The fallout from Tuesday’s decisions will be broad with the potential to be catastrophic.

For starters, eligibility issues in the event of a lost season will need to be addressed by the NCAA. The Pac-12 and Utah have both said they will press the governing body for college sports to protect players’ qualifications, and expectations about eligibility will be on the agenda when Division I Council resumes on Wednesday.

Specifically to Utah, the athletic department of Utes is facing costly economic consequences. In fiscal 2019, which included the 2018 football season, the Utah football program generated $ 65.7 million in revenue, accounting for more than 66% of all athletic department revenue for that period. Utah is already working with $ 8 million on its fiscal operating budget for 2021, athletic director Mark Harlan told reporters last month.

That $ 8 million deficit was what Harlan expected to see when he worked under the assumption of the originally prescribed six home games with what he called “limited fans.” While a spring football season remains on the table, zero home games and zero ticket sales would likely widen that deficit.

The other bankruptcy sports of Utah, women’s ball, women’s soccer and women’s cross country all fall under “other sports” on the Utah fiscal report of 2019. ‘Other sports’ ended in the red with more than $ 13 million for that time.

How those sports plus all the other so-called “non-revenue” sports in Utah will be affected by the loss of football revenue. Is not known.

Winter sports are also affected. Pac-12 basketball will not start until Jan. Utah’s nonconferences schedule, which includes Battle 4 Atlantis, has not been officially canceled, but is being conducted in this way. The conference moved to a 20-game schedule in 2020-21, with each team playing twice in December.

How the basketball side of things will go, including how many games will be played, is one of the many things that athletic divisions in the league are now left to deal with.