COLLEGE FOOTBALL UPDATE: ARE THERE ANY ADULTS IN THE ROOM?

From the same people who brought you athletic conferences with names that don’t coincide with the number of member schools and a complete shutdown of fall sports two months before having enough data on which to base a decision, we now get a reversal of policy and an October beginning to the 2020 Big Ten football season. It appears that all it took was for Notre Dame, smack in the middle of the Big Ten’s geographic footprint, to play a game in front of thousands of students, faculty and staff to convince the conference presidents that it’ll be okay to get underway next month.

The SEC, ACC and the Big 12’s 10 teams (this failure to count is almost an epidemic) began play last weekend, thus Notre Dame’s home win over Duke in South Bend, Indiana, a state where two Big 10 schools are located. Not that anyone is actually keeping track, but the Big Ten has 14 schools but apparently a name with the wrong number doesn’t strike anyone in a conference comprised of institutions of higher learning as anything but totally normal.

The Big 12 schools are playing a round robin conference schedule plus a patsy game designed to make sure its teams play the same number of games as the SEC, which has limited its teams to only conference games, but expanded that number to 10 for this season. The SEC has vehemently opposed the move to even nine conference games in the past on the basis that its teams are so good that it would be too punishing for them to face each other that many times in a single season. But enter COVID-19 and the prospect of less television revenue, and all of a sudden the conference must have decided they don’t have such a tough bunch of teams after all, in spite of what Alabama coach Nick Saban says.

With the non-conference game, the Big 12 was probably thinking its teams would be able to schedule a game against a non-Power Five team, thus getting an extra win that the SEC teams won’t be able to grab. Oops! Sun Belt members Arkansas State and Louisiana (not to be confused with LSU, although don’t tell Iowa State that) went into empty stadiums in Manhattan, Kansas and Ames, Iowa to deal Kansas State and Iowa State upset losses. Maybe the conference should add those two teams to their membership so it doesn’t look so bad and, in the process, get the name to match the number of schools.

After centuries (okay, it’s really only one century and a third of another) of refusing to include their football team in a conference, suddenly Notre Dame is all in with the Atlantic Coast Conference. If you thought math wasn’t necessarily a strong suit of athletic leagues, it appears that their understanding of geography is equally as weak. At last count, and this isn’t taking into consideration the two centimeters the ocean has risen in the last 30 years due to climate change, South Bend is roughly 700 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. It apparently makes no sense for Notre Dame to be in the Big Ten, where they would be within five hours from at least nine of the conference’s other 14 schools. But I guess 14 schools in a 10 team conference is okay, but 15 is just out of the question.

And then what about that pesky Atlantic Coast Conference? They also expanded their conference schedule from eight games to ten, and also allowed a non-conference game, but it had to be played in the same state as the school. Just so I have this straight, teams of member schools can travel outside the state to play schools in the same conference, but not to play schools in other conferences, but schools from outside the conference can travel from outside their state to play in the state of the ACC member school. Perhaps the President’s task force on COVID-19 would be interested to understand the nature of the interstate interconference cross contagiousness of and the intrastate intraconference immunity from the virus, because frankly, I’m a little confused.

Meanwhile, the Pac-12 (which by some miscalculation actually consists of 12 member schools) has not announced any change to its cancellation of the football season. California Governor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that there are no state restrictions prohibiting the conference from playing football games. Once again, that crazy math enters the picture, as California guidelines put forth by the governor limit gatherings to no more than 12 people. Yes, there are only 11 players from a team on the field at the same time, but my minimal knowledge of the game suggests that there needs to be another 11 players from the opposing team somewhere in the general vicinity. Even using conference math, where 12 added to 14 equals 22, or is 10 added to 12 equals 26, or is it…oh, forget it, you get my point, there needs to be more than 12 players on the field to play a game. Whether Newsom isn’t aware of his own guidelines, he can’t count, or because it isn’t a church he doesn’t really care, there’s a huge disconnect somewhere between Sacramento and Pasadena.

What should distress you about this piece is not the corny attempt at humor, although I wouldn’t blame you for feeling that way, it’s that the information about the conferences and their respective decisions are all factual. This is really happening, right now, in September 2020. After almost eight months of the COVID-19 reality, we have decisions being made based on a variety of data points, for different reasons and for the benefit of conflicting constituencies.  

The latest novel in the PK Frazier series is now available. "Unplayable Lie", as well as the first three installments, can be found at PK Frazier novels