You almost got the feeling these past few days that the so-called Power 5 college athletic conferences--the Big Ten, the Big 12, the ACC, the SEC and the Pac-12--were playing a game of chicken.
Which would be the first to cancel the coming football season because of covid-19? They all knew that whoever went first would bear the brunt of criticism from football fans, including in all likelihood the one in the White House.
Sure enough, when the announcement came Tuesday afternoon that the Big Ten was canceling football--or rather, postponing it to the spring--hellfire began raining down almost immediately.
A staff member from a prominent Big Ten program was "Sad. Speechless. Shocked" and described players as devastated, according to a plugged-in ESPN journalist. One Big Ten school, Nebraska, was openly defiant, issuing a statement indicating it would try to find a way to play football despite the conference's decision.
The drama began on Monday, when sportscaster Dan Patrick reported that the presidents of the Big Ten universities had voted 12 to 2 to cancel the season. (Yes, there are 14 schools in the Big Ten). He also said that the Pac-12 was going to cancel its season, that the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference were on the fence, and that the Southeastern Conference fully intended to play the season, no matter what.
Word soon began to leak out of the Big Ten that at least five conference athletes, all of whom had been infected by covid-19, had contracted myocarditis, a rare and potentially dangerous heart ailment.
In his statement on Tuesday afternoon, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren made it sound as though the decision to postpone football (and other fall sports) was completely rooted in medical concerns.
I don't doubt Warren's sincerity. Even aside from potential heart issues, it's pretty hard to social distance when you're playing football. There won't be a bubble like the NBA; teams will have to travel to different cities, stay in hotels and interact with people who are not part of their group.
Still, it's worth pointing out that a few other issues were lying just beneath the surface. One was money. The only way the Big Ten--and the rest of college football--can avoid a complete financial disaster is if the season is made up in the spring. That is what the Big Ten is promising to do.
It had better pray that the pandemic has loosened its grip by then. According to data compiled by Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, canceling football could cost $4 billion, mostly from television revenue, with each of the 65 athletic departments in the Power 5 losing an average of $62 million. If there's no spring football, there will be a financial bloodbath.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the SEC still seemed pretty sanguine about going forward, despite the potential pitfalls. Then again, the SEC is the closest thing the National Football League has to a minor league. Several players expressed a desire to play. The ACC was said to be leaning closer to playing in the fall than it had been just a few days earlier. The Big 12 was said to be moving forward with the intent of playing.
And the Pac-12? An hour and a half after the Big 10 announcement, it issued a statement saying that it too would postpone its fall football season and reconsider after the first of the year. I looked on Twitter right after the announcement. The wrath was much more subdued. The Big Ten took one for the other conferences.
Common sense triumphed over politics and money--for now. It's usually the other way around.