The Big Ten released new 10-game schedules for their teams on Wednesday morning, delivering a glimmer of hope that the football season could be played amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Three days later there were new reasons to optimize games will take place this fall.
The Mid-American conference on Saturday canceled all fall sports with the hope of moving them to the spring, becoming the first FBS conference to scrap the season. At almost the same time it became official, the Big Ten retreated to the disaster for up to a season and knowledgeable teams will be restricted from training in helmets “until further notice”, and avoid using pads.
“We understand that there are many questions about how this is affecting separations, such as the ability to move forward with the season,” the Big Ten said in a statement. “As we have consistently stated, we will continue to evaluate day by day, relying on our medical experts, to make the best decisions possible for the health, safety and wellness of our student-athletes.”
That’s not a stimulating statement about Big Ten football in the fall, especially as nationwide programs continue to report positive COVID-19 reports and players are turned down for the season due to health and safety concerns.
Big ten presidents and chancellors met on Saturday, but a conference spokeswoman told MLive there was no plan to vote on football this fall and said the meeting was planned earlier. Announcing morning of practice restrictions and then canceling the season later the same day might seem strange, but it is obviously a unique and complicated situation.
Since the NCAA pandemic ended in March, all remaining winter sports championships, including the men’s basketball tournament, and all spring sports championships have been canceled, the college football season has been in jeopardy. And there were COVID-19 spikes all over the country this summer as players returned to campus for training.
UConn became the first FBS program to cancel the season on Wednesday morning. That announcement came at almost the same time that the Big Ten released conference-only schedules for their teams with games adjusted to begin the weekend of September 5 and the option to push back the start of the season.
“I feel comfortable sitting here today, but it’s a fluid situation,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said on Wednesday when he appeared on BTN. “There is no guarantee that we will have bankruptcy like a football season, but we do everything we can, that can happen when we are so blessed to be able to have bankruptcy that things are organized and done in a very methodical and professional way. ”
For teams planning to play season opener on Sept. 5, fall camp could begin on Friday. NCAA rules require an acclimatization period of five days at the beginning of the fall camp. Helmets are the only two days allowed equipment, shoulder pads can be added for the next two days and full pads are allowed on the fifth day. Big Ten teams are now limited to training in plain helmets.
Michigan State, which resumed workouts on Wednesday after the entire team spent two weeks in quarantine, had its first practice under new coach Mel Tucker on Friday and was back on the field on Saturday. The team is scheduled to practice on Sunday and Monday, has shut down Tuesday and then the next day again.
“I think folks, we can deal with bad news, we can get it, we can tackle it, earn it and good news, of course we can tackle that,” Tucker said Thursday during a Zoom call with reporters. ‘It’s the uncertainty where you have a lot of problems and it can create stress and it can create some level of anxiety. There are just so many strangers. What we are doing is focusing on the truth, the truth that we know today and based on what we know, then we know what we can do with that information. How can we trade? What are the things we can place based on what we know? And with this information we will try to get it right, we will try to get it right every day. ”
Along the way in Ann Arbor, Michigan also had her first practice of fall camp on Friday.
“A good 100 players tested this week, and each of them came back negative,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said on the In In Trenches podcast this week. “That, yes, that’s how we do it – put it in God’s hands and move forward.”
Some of the top players in the Big Ten have kicked off the season, with indications about health and safety. Four Michigan State players, including senior with defensive end Jacub Panasiuk and senior starting referee Jordan Reid, have denied them since Wednesday, while Michigan has yet to announce a player that they have rejected. MAC players no longer have the option to play this fall or not.
“We are charting a conservative path, and it is one that is recommended by our medical advisory group,” MAC commissioner Dr Jon Steinbrecher said on Saturday. “There are just too many unknowns to put our student-athletes in situations that are not clearly understood.”
Warren, whose son Powers plays football at Mississippi State, is a little more than a year into his tenure as commissioner of Big Ten and decided on March 12 to cancel the men’s basketball tournament. About five months later, the conference remains at a crossroads over the question of whether it believes it can continue with fall sports.
“I stay focused, I keep praying to do the right thing and I look forward to hopefully one day turning around and saying that we did everything we could in the Big Ten to keep our student-athletes healthy. both physically and mentally during this journey, “Warren said on Wednesday,” and that we learned a lot during this process and that we created an environment that they know is safe for them to compete in intercollegiate athletics. “
