Even as Big 12 plays on, commissioner calls it ‘delusional’ to project what lies ahead
Say this for straight-shooting Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby: For a guy stating the case for his conference to play football this fall, he spent plenty of his hour-plus media teleconference Tuesday acknowledging, even illuminating, the precarious circumstances of trying to proceed in this bizarre time.
This was less a sales job than it was an honest and candid glance through the looking glass at the house of cards inside a maze that seems to have more dead ends than it does a true destination.
In the wake of the Big Ten and the Pac-12 postponing their fall sports calendars to winter, for instance, Bowlsby said he feels good about the extensive scientific and medical consultations behind the Big 12’s decision and approach.
Then he’d qualify that by adding something like this about the ever-evolving state of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic:
“We (have) found that what we thought was golden 60 days ago is garbage today.”
He spoke of having clarity about proceeding, for now, though immediately distinguishing clarity from certainty — and soon adding that it’s hard to handicap even whether the delayed, conference-only fall schedule will ever get started.
“If anybody is around that tells you that they can accurately forecast what’s going to happen with the virus, they’re delusional. Even the best scientific minds are unable to forecast with precision,” he said, later adding that “we feel good about where we are simply because we have good practices in place.”
But where they are is a fragile place and where they’re going, well, who’s to say?
Given that as of now many are shifting their focus to playing football in the winter, which presents its own set of challenges, it’s reasonable to wonder how legitimate any championship, fall or winter, would be with such scrambled schedules and disconnected structure.
“I think you’d ask the logical question whether either one of them is actually a champion,” said Bowlsby, calling it a good question that is unanswered at this point.
So like the pandemic has done at so many levels, around the world but certainly with painful impact here in the U.S., it’s exposing fundamental fault lines and fissures.
In this case, it’s in the NCAA sports model and college football in particular.
And what it reveals is a fractured fairy tale that needs a re-framing and a reset if not re-imagining.
Because with nobody really in control, many are left to their own devices and taking educated (or not) guesses. And that’s notably true even when it comes to the speculated-ultimately-would-be-breakaway group of Power Five conferences, which appears as divided as any other group right now.
The Southeastern Conference — the SEC — and the Atlantic Coast Conference — ACC — are, like the Big 12, proceeding with plans to play this fall.
“I think we can all talk to the same people, we can all look at the same data, we can all look at our own individual circumstances and we can come to different outcomes,” Bowlsby said.
Sounds familiar in the pandemic life, doesn’t it?
But since the NCAA itself seems incapable of creating a responsible uniform standard, largely because it has long since lost its clout with, and jurisdiction over, college football, the game is left to solve itself with no commissioner or singular voice.
And we’ve seen what that can lead to.
The madness of realignment a few years ago offered fresh evidence of what an insatiable beast college football is, shredding long-term geographical alliances and rivalries and traditions for money grabs in the name of “stability.”
Now, here’s Nebraska, which coach Scott Frost on Monday said was “a proud member of the Big Ten” but is “prepared to look at any and all options” if the Big Ten wasn’t playing.
Between that and other reporting and observations, Omaha World-Herald columnist Tom Shatel wrote that the beginning of the end of Nebraska and the Big Ten had been signaled by Frost “and retransmitted on Tuesday by Frost, NU President Ted Carter, Chancellor Ronnie Green and Athletic Director Bill Moos.”
Might that mean, gulp, a potential Nebraska return to the Big 12?
On Tuesday, Bowlsby said Nebraska had not “reached out in any way.” He later said that entertaining the idea of temporary members is “not in any of our plans at the present time.”
Only time will tell about more permanent matters, all to be navigated as student-athletes further assert their voice and the virus lurks over it all. In the meantime, the pandemic has cast light on the limitations of even the seemingly super-power conferences.
Asked about the Big 12’s plans regarding to what degree, if at all, fans can attend football games this fall, Bowlsby said that’s not a matter of conference policy but state and school issues.
Asked what number of positive infections might cause a game to be postponed or canceled, Bowlsby said there was no set number and that there are different factors to keep considering on that issue.
Many other questions remain to be solved, too, from matters of eligibility to aid.
Not to mention the obvious variables of the blood-sweat-tears-saliva-breathing-on-the-other-guy nature of the sport and the elephant outside the room of controlling players’ off-field behavior once school starts.
Preseason camp, he said, is about as close to a bubble as they can get their players, in terms of staying together, eating together and training together. And then, well, a lot of this will come down to “whether or not young people can discipline themselves to not go to parties where there are hundreds of kids in close contact.”
It’s all a lot to ask for this to work with the risks of severe illness, even a death, hovering nearby no matter how healthy they all might seem.
So while we appreciate Bowlsby speaking honorably to so many aspects of this return to play with such openness, it’s also hard to see past all the looming traps in a landscape where all seem left to fend for themselves.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 4:51 PM.