What does the ACC, Notre Dame decision mean for college football?

The ACC made its decision to schedule on Wednesday, opting for 10 conference games, including Notre Dame, and one game without a conference. That leaves the SEC and Big 12 as the only leagues that haven’t made an announcement about what they plan to do about programming. Although we now have a few more answers, many questions remain.

Here are the most pressing ones surrounding the college football season.

So Notre Dame can win the ACC now?

Yes! Everyone who has screamed and screamed for Notre Dame to join a conference can finally see how it unfolds, even if it’s just for this season. Notre Dame plays all of its other sports at the ACC and already had a programming partnership with the league, so it made sense to play a full ACC schedule for 2020 for both the league and the Irish. There will be no divisions for this year, so the two teams with the highest winning percentage in the league will meet in the ACC championship game. Notre Dame collects the state of Florida, North Carolina, Syracuse and Boston College and already had Clemson and Louisville scheduled, giving the Irish the top 3 projected teams in the league for 2020. But this is also gearing up to get potentially a Clemson-Notre Dame rematch in Charlotte, North Carolina.

What else do we need to know about the decision?

No. 1: This decision does not mean that we will actually have an ACC season that begins the weekend of September 12. All of this is subject to change, depending on whether the public health guide allows it. No. 2: The fate of non-conference games remains unclear, as those contests were not announced as part of the programming model. Because schools will have to play those games in their home states, major clashes like Auburn-North Carolina and Virginia-Georgia in Atlanta would be off the table, along with possibly Notre Dame in the Navy. Because the SEC has yet to make a decision on its programming model, the SEC / ACC rivalry games between Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, South Carolina-Clemson, and Louisville-Kentucky remain unknown. All eight schools want to play, but if the SEC uses a conference-only model, that won’t happen.

Where are the SEC and Big 12 now?

The SEC is next, as the presidents have a video conference scheduled for Thursday. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey declined to speculate and said in a prepared statement: “We continue our discussions focused on the return of fall sports, including soccer. We will announce any decisions at the appropriate time.”

The Big 12 will be watching and waiting in the SEC like everyone else, but the Big 12 presidents won’t meet until Monday. Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN that the conference’s athletic directors will present around four or five different programming models for presidents to consider when they meet on Monday.

“We are going to arm them with all the information they need to make a decision if that is their wish,” Bowlsby said.

The Big 12 subcommittee that was formed to discuss the return of fall sports had a meeting on Wednesday night, and the conference soccer coaches will have an opportunity to weigh in on Thursday. Bowlsby said he is also on the lookout for the possibility of an SEC announcement in the coming days.

“We have been collaborating but also operating independently,” Bowlsby said of the Power 5 commissioners. “It was never our intention to have identical results, I just think we have all applied similar processes and will arrive at a similar location when all is said and done”.

How likely is a spring season right now?

It’s more likely a couple of weeks ago, but many still see it as a last resort. A spring season raises new questions about player safety: Can they physically handle two seasons, even the shortest, in a calendar year? – The draft of the NFL and the uncertainty about the state of the virus and a vaccine for the new year.

Spring football is an option, Duke coach David Cutcliffe said Friday “when it’s the only option left,” echoing the sentiments of Penn State AD Sandy Barbour and Bowlsby, who called it a “last resort. “

American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco went even further.

“We don’t have much of an appetite for spring football … we’re not sure that spring football, if we don’t play in the fall, it will even happen,” he said. “Especially if there is no vaccine. And we are not really sure that it will not compromise part of the 2021 season if you play in the spring. Also, if you have to practice in the middle of winter to prepare for your spring football, you are practicing Indoors, are you going to spread the virus more easily in that scenario? These are rational questions that need to be answered. “

However, not everyone is so skeptical.

“I think people who say it’s not [an option]I just don’t want to think about that in my opinion, “Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said earlier this month.” I think it would be wrong of us to take any potential option off the table right now. I think it would be very difficult to say that spring is not a potential option. For my part, I think it is very feasible. …

“It would probably be a conference season and just a postseason. We’ve often seen teams go in and play well in January at the College Football Playoff and start spring practice sometime in February, and nobody says a word about it. You He would have to give the players a lot of free time to get their bodies back in the summer. Maybe a little later it will start next fall. “

What about other teams scheduled to play ACC, Big Ten, or Pac-12 without a conference?
To be determined. Following the Big Ten and Pac-12 announcements, the affected conferences and teams issued statements similar to those of Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson:

“We were aware of this possibility and will continue to evaluate the right decisions and the right time in the future. The safety, health, and well-being of our student athletes, coaches, staff members, and campuses continue to be our top priority.”

After the Alabama storefront opening against USC was canceled, Crimson Tide AD Greg Byrne said “we will do everything we can to adapt.”

Speaking of marquee games, which high-profile ones have been canceled so far?

Oregon has lost two fascinating ones, first with the power of the North Dakota State FCS and its beloved NFL favorite, QB Trey Lance. The ducks were then scheduled to receive the state of Ohio in Week 2.

USC loses games with Alabama and Notre Dame, and the Irish will also lose playing Wisconsin at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Jim Harbaugh and Michigan were slated to open the season in Washington, and rivalry game Utah-BYU is also out for a year. BYU could lose up to six games off its schedule if the rest of the Power 5 leagues follow suit.

What will the season be like for the Pac-12 and Big Ten?

For the Pac-12, it will be delayed.

One of the reasons the conference decided to delay the start of the soccer season was concern that UCLA and USC were not ready to play in early September due to coronavirus cases in the Los Angeles area, sources said. ESPN.

Meanwhile, the top ten officials are still considering moving their division games to the front of the schedule, in case the coronavirus disrupts the season. That way, he could still determine a championship through the division’s winning percentage despite an incomplete season.

Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith still awaits a full schedule for the 10-game conference.

“I am hopeful that is where we will end next week to block that,” he said. “We have talked about that, and that is our preference.”

“We haven’t gone into those details yet,” added Smith. “I anticipate that next week we will go into detail on how our schedules will work.”

Smith also said that if teams can play in September, but something happens later in the month or in October, “we can press the pause button and provide an opportunity for our student athletes to take no chances. We can move.” games … There is flexibility, I can’t say enough, that’s significant. “

Get used to it. If there is going to be a season this year, all options must be on the table.

What does this mean for the College Football Playoff and bowl games?

College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock has firmly said the CFP “will be ready for what comes down”, without going into further detail about what that could mean for the way the selection committee evaluates teams or if it is feasible to drive the entire tiebreak. On the way back there should be major delays in the season. Schedule evaluation is always a critical component, and so are non-conference games.

Now that Pac-12 and Big Ten and ACC are going to the conference alone, how does that assessment change? The ACC, with Notre Dame playing a full roster of conference games with the league for this season only, will play an 11-game schedule that includes a non-conference game. If Big 12 and SEC also go with models that allow them to play a game without conferences, does that give them an advantage in the all-important strength of the time factor?

“That is why the committee has 13 soccer experts,” Hancock told ESPN earlier this month. “Their task is to select the best four teams based on the game on the field and the times set by the conferences.”

In fact, conference commissioners and Jack Swarbrick established the playoff protocol and will likely determine the number of games that must be played to qualify for the four-team playoffs once all leagues submit programming patterns. But even then, we may not have an answer to this question until we’re in the season: what if teams in the playoff hunt have played a different number of games due to cancellations due to the virus?

As for the games themselves, they remain on schedule, including the national championship game in Miami on January 11. But as Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stokan said, “We are also adaptable. If we need to go back and I think Bill has said this, if they need to delay the championship game, they and Florida have had those conversations and they continue being flexible to do it too. “