The Pac-12 will play a seven-game conference football season beginning Nov. 6, the league announced Thursday.
The decision, voted on by the Pac-12’s CEO group on Thursday, represents an official reversal after the conference announced in early August it would postpone all sports until at least Jan. 1, citing health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Would the CFP accept a team that only played seven games? Well, let’s put it this way: they haven’t said they wouldn’t. Besides, Larry’s got his eyes on the real prize.
Even if the Pac-12 doesn’t have a team worthy of inclusion in the four-team field, the eligibility component is important so it can be in position to collect the sizable payout. Last season, there was a $66 million base payout to each of the Power 5 conferences.
It’s always a relief when medical science aligns with profit.
How do you know when you’re watching an Olympic-class shitheel at work? Paying out performance bonuses to high level employees approximately one month before half the staff was laid off or furloughed is a fairly ordinary shitheel move.
“I have no idea why they changed the schedule, but I was surprised,’’ one networks employee said. “I was just told, ‘Heads up, bonuses will be paid at the end of the week.’’’
A conference spokesperson said the payment timeline was accelerated to coincide with salary reductions for the highly-paid employees and because — with furloughs and layoffs possible if the football season was disrupted — the payments could be used to “support the retention of key employees.”
Yeah, I’m sure losing key employees during a pandemic shutdown was a real risk.
If Larry Scott has a bottom, I don’t think we’ve found it yet.
The most glaring incorrect metric listed the seven-day average positivity rate for tests in Los Angeles County as 19% — more than three times the 5.49% average listed by the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
It’s times like this that make you realize why they pay Larry Scott the big bucks.
[Ed. note: It should go without saying that this post isn’t an invite to debate COVID stats, so don’t go there.]
Two months ago, if you’d have told any college football fan there’d be one last P5 holdout to starting the 2020 season and asked them to choose which one, the likely answer would have been… well, the one that is the last P5 holdout.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott says the conference has “gotten the comfort” to play football this fall, but needs to secure approvals from county public health officials in Oregon and California in order to proceed, with the best-case scenario for the start of the season being “end of October-early November.”
Scott’s remarks came during an interview on ESPN’s SportsCenter Wednesday night, capping a wild day for the conference. The day began with the Pac-12 as the lone Power 5 conference not planning to play fall sports after the Big Ten announced it was reversing course and starting its football season Oct. 23-24, saw California Gov. Gavin Newsom say his state’s regulations weren’t impeding the Pac-12 from playing despite 12-player cohort limitations to practices, Scott and Newsom spoke and Newsom contacted USC officials to address those impractical guidelines for football, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s office announced she and the Oregon Health Authority granted UO and OSU exemptions to state guidelines in order to play pending written plans and protocols from the Pac-12 and the athletic directors of USC and UCLA reportedly hold a joint call with Los Angeles County public health officials to get their go-ahead to begin contact sports practices.
My first thought on hearing that news was encapsulated nicely in this tweet:
This is incredible. Not that within a matter of hours the governors of California and Oregon lifted restrictions limiting practice for Pac-12 football teams. But that seemingly, until today, no one in the Pac-12 bothered to ask them. This is NEXT LEVEL ineptitude right here 🤦♂️ https://t.co/jSP1pSZPUi
The Pac-12’s “most aggressive” return plan is currently targeting mid-to-late November, according to a source familiar with the league’s discussions.
Earlier this month, the Pac-12 announced its partnership with Quidel Corporation, a manufacturer of FDA-approved rapid tests that will allow the league to test its student-athletes daily for the coronavirus.
While the new testing systems will be on every campus by the end of the month, the league still expects to need a short time to train staff how to use them, and ensure the proper testing protocols are in place.
Schools in the states of California and Oregon still have not been cleared by public health officials to resume contact practices, let alone games. The league’s presidents and chancellors wouldn’t consider a vote to return until that status changes.
I can’t wait to hear Scott argue that his 3-0 conference champ deserves a playoff berth.
“You can’t pay college athletes,” you said. “Where would the money come from?”
“If you pay kids in the revenue producing sports, you’ll have to cut non-revenue producing programs to make up for that,” you argued. “That wouldn’t be fair to those kids, now, would it? I mean, that’s the only place the schools and conferences could go to cover the expense, ri…”
It sounds like the Pac-12 has millions of reasons to hope every P5 conference shuts down their seasons.
Kirby Smart sees the good in the extended preseason practice period: “By spreading it out over more days, you’re giving guys more time for recovery, and there are not those intense repeated practices.”
Judging from the statement #WeAreUnited released after Larry Scott announced he nuked the 2020 Pac-12 football season, he’s in for a stressful winter.
The financial demands have been jettisoned. Left are health concerns, frustration over having those concerns dismissed and a number of shots at the lack of leadership coming from Scott and his office. There’s also the promise/threat that they expect a voice in the shaping of whatever comes for 2021.
Like it or not, this is going to be a topic of interest between now and the start of next year, especially if the plug gets pulled on the sport nationally. There will be a vacuum and you know what they say about vacuums.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott: “Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble.”
And that, my friends, means that we will not have college basketball in 2020-21 unless the attitude regarding COVID-19 and masks in this country changes drastically.
I think you misspelled “will not” there, Larry, but point taken.
Power 5 AD on Big Ten & Pac-12 canceling fall football:
“You’ve got one pro guy with no background in the industry in Kevin Warren and a guy in Larry Scott who acts like he’s smarter than everyone else. We’re supposed to be about the players. This isn’t about the players.”
“He (Kendal Briles) likes to move fast, fast tempo with the offense,” outside linebacker Jermaine Johnson said. “Better believe Coach Smart has had us out there running fast, being ready for that. … We’ve just been conditioning getting ready for that fast tempo offense.” — AB-H, 9/25/20
