The Pac-12 is giving its own twist to the “plus one” soccer programming model under consideration by the SEC, ACC, and Big 12. The league has already canceled non-conference games and is currently finalizing plans to adopt a 10 games only. Slated for the end of next week, various sources in the league tell Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News first reported the Pac-12 plans.
Pac-12 teams typically play a nine-game conference whiteboard. The 10-game model would require teams to play against all five teams in their division and five out of six teams in the opposing division in a season that would begin on September 19, three weeks after planned Week 1, sources report. Dodd.
The proposal gives the league up to 14 weeks to complete 10 games and a conference title game that could be played any of the first three weekends of December, depending on how the season progresses.
The plan must be approved by university presidents before going into effect, and is presented as states within the conference’s geographic footprint agreement with an increasing number of COVID-19. California reported its largest daily increase in cases Tuesday when it moved to New York as the state with the most cases since the pandemic began.
High school football in California won’t start until December, at the earliest, and the state’s junior college sanction organization, the California Community College Athletic Association, is moving soccer into the spring. Even Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott tested positive for COVID-19.
The announcement of Scott’s positive test came just hours after the league initially announced its decision on July 10 to play only conference games this fall. In that announcement, Scott said that the safety of student-athletes and those related to the league “remains our number one priority.”
“Our decisions have been and will be guided by science and data, and based on the trends and indicators of the past few days, it has become clear that we must provide ourselves with the maximum flexibility to schedule and delay any move to the next phase of back-to-game activities, “Scott added.
These developments suggest that the league remains determined to host a fall soccer season. Furthermore, he suggests that Power Five conferences are probably on the same page on how to play shorter and more flexible schedules. Of course, all of this depends on COVID-19 being more under control in the coming months.
