Briggs: After dark day, what's next for the Big Ten?

Of all the cultural casualties of a pandemic, this is the one that hits hardest in these parts.

By David Briggs / The Blade
Wed, 12 Aug 2020 01:01:01 GMT

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Respect the decision or hate it, football fans in northwest Ohio are all feeling the same today.

Emptier than we would ever care to admit.

The Big Ten announced Tuesday that it is postponing fall sports, including football, leaving — in the wake of the same vote by the Mid-American Conference last weekend — a hole in our hearts and an aching void on our autumn calendar. 

There will be no national championship push by Ohio State. No chance for redemption at Michigan. No tailgates or marching bands or water-cooler debates. No games at all, let alone The Game.

Say it ain’t so.

Of all the cultural casualties of a pandemic with far greater consequences than the fate of a college football season, this is the one that hits hardest in these parts.

If you’re sad and angry, I get it.

So am I, for many but perhaps not all of the same reasons.

My disappointment is also with ourselves, because if we had channeled half of the outrage many are aiming at the Big Ten into fighting the coronavirus, we wouldn’t be in this position. Let this be another wake-up call.

As for the Big Ten, I disagree only with the mechanics of its decision. To allow players to go through the first five days of training camp — all the while surely knowing the season was done — was unnecessary and cruel. My heart breaks for them. Also, the league could do itself a favor by making the medical experts it leaned on available to clearly explain why the season was untenable.

But none of that should shroud the bigger picture.

A fall season was not going to happen. Probably not anywhere, and definitely not in the Big Ten, where the presidents are sensitive to the perception that their schools are football programs with a university attached to them. Not with the country in the grip of a virus of which so much remains unknown, including its long-term effect on the heart. At least 15 conference players have developed myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — after testing positive for the coronavirus, according to CBS.

Here’s what struck me in a statement from Michigan president Mark Schlissel, an immunologist by trade: ”The impact of extreme physical exertion [with] COVID-19 [is] not yet well understood.”

I appreciate the passion of the players, coaches, and fans, but these are not decisions to be made with emotion. As desperately as we all wanted a season, the postponement of fall football is not a capitulation to fear but a considered precaution against high-stakes uncertainties.

Now, with that, I’ll duck — it’s OK to disagree! — and move on.

What’s next?

No idea, but after a verdict that leaves more questions than answers, here’s where I would begin:

■ Will the Big Ten and Pac-12 have company?

As dusk fell on Survivor: College Football Island, three power conferences remained: the on-the-fence Big 12 and the full-steam-ahead ACC and SEC.

Again, my sense is everyone will be voted off the island, likely sooner rather than later. For all the posturing by the ACC and SEC, their presidents are unlikely to have the stomach — if not the sense — to travel this road alone. 

But what if they do? Predictably, there were no shortage of doomsday predictions.

“If the SEC and ACC play, the conferences that don't play are basically giving their member institutions a diet version of what SMU got,” tweeted CBS national college football writer Barrett Sallee, referring to to the last school to receive the death penalty. “Players are going to bail, nobody will sign, and it'll take years to recover.”

My response: Give ... me ... a ... break.

I’d like to meet the players lining up to transfer on the eve of camp in the middle of a pandemic for the off chance to play a half-baked season. And I’d really like to meet all these schools that magically have droves of open scholarship spots.

I asked Toledo coach Jason Candle about this concern in the MAC, where since the league punted one player has reportedly entered the transfer portal: sixth-year Kent State receiver Antwan Dixon.

“If somebody needs to leave our football program after [the MAC] came to a conclusion based off of what's the safest thing for our student-athletes and their ability to go do what they love to do, that's their personal choice,” Candle said. “I think we have a very strong culture. I love our football team. I love the leadership.”

In other words, once the emotion of the moment passes, Toledo will be fine. So will the Big Ten.

■ So, is a spring season really an option?

It the climate improves, the Big Ten said it will look to play a spring season, as much to salvage TV revenue as stage a legitimate season. (What, you think Justin Fields is playing in the spring?)

I’m just not sure how you do it.

Given what we know about the potential long-term toll of playing football, the idea of two seasons in one calendar year — even a shortened spring season — feels more like a pie-in-the-sky vision to cheer everyone up rather than a practical option.

Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer called a spring schedule a non-starter.

“When you start, a player plays close to 1,000 reps a year,” he said. “That’s a lot of collisions, and that doesn't include training camp. That doesn't include all the practices. In spring practice, when I had players that played a lot of college football, they wouldn't do much in the spring, just because the amount of shots you can take. Now you double that in one calendar year? I don't see that happening. All due respect to what people are saying, I don’t see it.”

■ Could Ohio State and Michigan go rogue?

File this one in the fun-to-think-about category.

Imagine if the Buckeyes became a pro-tem member of the SEC. Or the Wolverines tagged along with the Big 12. Or the rivals played independent schedules culminating in the Ohio State-Michigan Classic presented by ProMedica at Perrysburg High School.

Sign us up.

But we’ll keep dreaming, as will the coaches — including Nebraska’s Scott Frost — who said their programs will “explore all options” to play a fall schedule. Unless a football team is willing to defy the medical guidance of the Big Ten, the league’s TV contract, and, possibly, its own president, no one is leaving the range.

Sadly, we must wait till next year.

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