Commissioners of the Power 5 conference held an emergency meeting on Sunday because there is growing concern among high school officials that the upcoming football season and other fall sports could not be played due to the coronavirus pandemic, sources told ESPN.
Several sources have told ESPN that Big Ten presidents, after a meeting on Saturday, are ready to pull the plug on his fall sports season, and they wanted to measure up as commissioners and university presidents and chancellors of the other Power 5 conferences – the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC – will fall in line with them.
Sources told ESPN that a large majority of Big Ten presidents have indicated they would vote to postpone the football season, hopefully after the spring. A Big Ten official confirmed to ESPN that no official vote took place during Saturday’s meeting, but the presidents are set to meet again Sunday night.
“It does not look good,” said one athletic director of Power 5.
Notre Dame has close ties to the Power 5, deciding to join the ACC in football this year instead of remaining independent due to the challenges of the pandemic. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick highlighted one of the central issues with changing the season.
“My view is if we change course, we would be better able to articulate the reason for doing this to our student-athletes,” he told ESPN.
The Mid-American conference on Saturday became the first FBS competition to kick off the fall sports season, including football.
Presidents and Chancellors of Pac-12 Universities met Tuesday.
Several sources have told ESPN in the past 48 hours that postponing or canceling the football season seems immutable. Many of those sources believed that it would eventually take a Power 5 conference to move things in that direction, and that either the Big Ten or Pac-12 would probably be the first league.
“No one wanted to be the first to do it,” a Power 5 coach told ESPN, “and now no one will want to be the last.”
A Power 5 manager added: “It feels like no one wants to, but it’s getting to the point where someone will have to.”
The ACC, Big 12 and SEC wanted to wait to see what happened after thousands of students came to their campuses this month, but they might be forced to act if the Big Ten and / or Pac-12 take action this week, the sources said.
Heather Dinich, Adam Rittenberg and Mark Schlabach contributed to this report.
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