Big Ten’s swift turnabout shows schools will always put amateurism first

On Wednesday, the Big Ten Conference announced a revised conference-only football schedule with a kickoff of Sept. 3. It was the earliest start date set by a Power Five conference, which sent the message that the league’s presidents and first-year Commissioner Kevin Warren were confident that their COVID-19 protocols were safe enough to play football games in less than a month.

But by Sunday night, reports were surfacing that the Big Ten had changed course and was now pressuring other Power Five conferences to join it in canceling the 2020 college football season, at least for the fall. Monday morning brought a report from the Detroit Free Press saying the Big Ten’s mind was already made up, then a response from the conference saying there had been no final decision.

These developments — which will up the pressure on the Pac-12 presidents, who are scheduled to meet Tuesday — begs the question: What changed in the last five days?

The national and regional pandemic picture didn’t worsen in that short amount of time. There wasn’t a coronavirus outbreak on a Big Ten campus. But here’s what did happen since the nation’s most prestigious and tradition-laden athletic conference put out a schedule that signaled it was ready to support competition in a high-contact sport during a pandemic:

Big Ten players organized under the umbrella of “College Athlete Unity,” a group founded by Michigan defensive back Hunter Reynolds, joining the Pac-12’s #WeAreUnited movement that launched Aug. 2 and threatened to boycott the season if its demands weren’t met. The Big Ten group, claiming to represent more than 1,000 players, focused its requests on uniform health and safety mandates and scholarship and eligibility protections and did not ask for a cut of revenues as the Pac-12 group had.

A Facebook post by Debbie Rucker, the mother of Indiana freshman offensive lineman Brady Feeney, that detailed the “14 days of hell” her son experienced while battling COVID-19 began to garner national attention. Rucker said Feeney now has heart problems and “bottom line, even if your son’s schools do everything right to protect them, they CAN’T PROTECT THEM!!”

The Mid-American Conference, regionally encompassed by the Big Ten footprint with schools in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, became the first Football Bowl Subdivision conference to cancel fall sports and hope for a spring miracle.

It will be fascinating to hear the Big Ten explain why it is considering bailing so quickly after months of preparation, bringing athletes back to campus to work out, get acclimated again to the football setting and even start practices with helmets. On Monday, some Big Ten schools continued with their regularly scheduled practices; others reportedly canceled theirs. Ohio State, a sure national championship contender, went ahead with its photo day.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3gXw9Ew