Pac-12 Conference cancels fall football season, all sports through end of 2020
There will be no Washington football this fall.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pac-12 CEO Group voted unanimously on Tuesday to postpone all sport competitions — football and basketball included — through the end of 2020. If conditions improve, the conference would consider resuming competition for impacted sports after the first of the year.
“Our students are committed young men and women who dedicate their time and talents to developing as students, athletes and leaders as they represent our programs, university and our community,” UW athletic director Jen Cohen said in a statement. “We will continue to work tirelessly to give these students, and all our students, an opportunity to compete this year. Our commitment to provide an environment for our students to thrive holistically — physically, mentally, academically and socially — does not change.”
The Pac-12 made the call less than two weeks after announcing a 10-game, conference-only schedule set to begin on Sept. 26.
“This decision was made after consultation with athletics directors, our coaches, football working groups and with the Pac-12 COVID-19 medical advisory committee who expressed concern on moving forward with contact practice,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said during a media webinar on Tuesday. “After reviewing all the data and considering the alternatives, and after having already delayed the start of our season and compressed our season, the CEO Group was unanimous that this decision was necessary.”
The Pac-12 was the second Power Five Conference to postpone its fall sports season, following closely behind the Big Ten. The Mid-American Conference and the Big West Conference also postponed.
“We knew there was a parallel track with the Big Ten also discussing this,” Oregon president Michael Schill, the chair of the Pac-12 CEO group, said during the webinar. “We feel good about our decision. We would have made it independent of the Big Ten. We respect the institutions in the Big Ten. Many of them have the same values that we have, and we’re happy they’re joining us.”
The ACC said in a release on Tuesday that it would “continue to make decisions based on medical advice” and “follow the process that has been in place for months and served us well.” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said his conference would “continue to refine ... policies and protocols for a safe return to sports.”
College football has held a season every year since Princeton and Rutgers played the first game in 1869, although many games were eliminated during the flu pandemic of 1918. There was no consensus national championship that year, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing both Pitt and Michigan as national champions.
The 1918 season was also the last time UW didn’t have an official game in the fall. The Huskies played two games, but the teams consisted of students and military personnel training on campus for World War I.
“There’s too much uncertainty right now that we wouldn’t feel comfortable beginning contact sports,” Schill said. “What we decided is that essentially what we would do is put a pause, basically until 2021, and we’ll constantly be reassessing the data. One of the things that is really important is we’re science-based, we’re academics. We are going to looking at facts, not just opinions. That’s something that we’re deeply committed to.
“At the same time ... we fully understand that this has tremendous human impacts. We had students whose dream it was to play this year and that dream, at least in the fall, is not going to happen. We have families. We have coaches. We have all sorts of people who were hoping that we’d be able to do this. That’s one of the reasons we delayed this decision until now, because we wanted to really give it the shot.”
Health concerns
The Pac-12 made available the return to play considerations of its COVID-19 Medical Advisory Committee. In the document, the committee outlined the three most concerning medical issues: Community prevalence, health outcomes related to the virus and testing capacity.
“We cannot bubble our student-athletes like pro sports can,” Scott said. “We’re part of broader campus communities. Student-athletes are living with pure students, on campus interacting. ... Enough questions and concerns have been raised … that we didn’t feel comfortable moving forward. The health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports has from day one been our top, top priority. That was the top priority today.”
The committee wrote that traveling to many locations in the conference, particularly on commercial aircraft, “is likely unsafe.”
The committee was also concerned about “information regarding potential serious cardiac side effects” and pointed to the unknowns surrounding potential short- and long-term effects. On Monday, ESPN’s Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach reported that a heart condition called myocarditis was worrying Power Five Conference administrators.
An inflammation of the heart muscle, myocarditis been found among athletes in several conferences, according to ESPN. Myocarditis is caused by a viral infection, such as H1N1 influenza or mononucleosis. The condition has been linked with COVID-19 “at a higher frequency than other viruses” and that “left undiagnosed and untreated, it can cause heart damage and sudden cardiac arrest, which can be fatal.”
“There is some emerging data about some health risks that affect athletes and specifically the cardiac side effects of coronavirus that we don’t know enough about and so we became more concerned about that,” Dr. Doug Aukerman, Oregon State’s sports medicine director and chair of the Pac-12’s medical advisory board, said during the webinar. “That’s how we began to start looking at how can we make sure we provide the safest opportunity, the safest environment for our student-athletes to compete and to exercise when social distancing can no longer be maintained.
“We’re essentially — by going into a contact season — asking them right now to disregard a lot of the guidelines ... to socially and physically distance to slow the spread of this disease. Instead, playing contact sports is a condition where it’s going to be at higher risk to spread.”
The committee also wrote that testing capacity needs to increase in order “to allow for more frequent testing, performed closer to gametime, and with more rapid turn-around time.”
The final conclusion read as follows:
The Pac-12 (Student-Athlete Health and Well-being Initiative) has concerns that many of its current recommendations cannot be achieved consistently across all universities at this point in time. Currently, the availability of frequent, FDA approved, accurate testing with rapid turn-around time vary at each of the Pac-12 institution locations. In addition, in many locations within the Conference, community test positivity rates and number of cases per 100,000 in the surrounding community exceed levels which infectious disease and public health officials deem safe for group sports. It is anticipated that over the next few months, rapid point of care tests will become more available and we will have a greater understanding of potential short- and long-term health effects of COVID-19 to better inform medical decision-making. Therefore, it is our recommendation that we delay progression to contact activity and competition occur until that time all criteria stated above are met.
The committee also included the following criteria for teams to return to play:
▪ COVID 19 is not actively spreading uncontrolled among the school community
▪ Access and ability to complete cardiac evaluations on those who do test positive for COVID-19
▪ Testing access and capacity to satisfy testing recommendations, including the ability to test within 24 hours of competition and have results prior to that competition
▪ Capability to isolate new positive cases and quarantine high-risk contacts.
▪ Adequate local health care capacity as determined by local public health officials
▪ Ability to provide adequate care for the institution’s student-athletes
The process
Schill said the CEO Group “wanted it to be unanimous and it was unanimous,” adding that the biggest disagreement during Tuesday’s process might have been over choosing the wording for the press release.
“It’s tremendously disappointing to reach this point, but the continued spread of the coronavirus around the country, plus the new questions being raised about its potential heath effects, forced our hand,” UW president Ana Mari Cauce said in a statement. “We’ve said all along that our decisions would be guided by our commitment to our students’ health and welfare, and that will continue to be our focus in light of this very difficult and disappointing decision for all of us.
“What we’ll do now is support our students whose seasons have been disrupted and ensure they have what they need to stay healthy, be successful in their classes and maintain their fitness as we wait for the country to get to a place where it’s possible to play college sports again.”
The Pac-12 considered further delaying or compressing the football season — an eight-game schedule starting in October was discussed — but Scott said there was “no indication things are likely to change in terms of the criteria that influenced this in the next few weeks.”
While the loss of revenue for the conference will be drastic, Scott said that subject wasn’t raised during conversations with presidents and chancellors.
“Obviously there are very significant impacts,” he said, “but the health and safety is the first obligation and duty and the primary focus.”
While no Pac-12 athletic competition can occur before 2021, Scott said teams are permitted to begin or continue with 20 hours of weekly meetings and walk-throughs. Scott said individual schools can decide on what actions to take next. Before Tuesday’s announcement, football teams would have been able to start training camp as early as Aug. 17.
Scott said a basketball planning group is working on different scenarios for the upcoming season. The men’s basketball schedule was supposed to consist of 20 games this season with added contests in late November and December. Now, that’s not an option.
#WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay
In the days leading up to the Pac-12’s decision, the #WeAreUnited player movement emerged. The group, which claims to represent hundreds of players in the conference, threatened to sit out fall camp and the season unless its demands were met. Those demands included concerns about health and safety procedures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scott and the player movement exchanged letters Friday that revealed a sharp divide over protocols for the COVID-19 pandemic, ESPN college football reporter Kyle Bonagura reported. “We were all left disappointed and deeply concerned that you are not taking this matter seriously,” according to a letter — signed by 18 student-athletes including Huskies Ty Jones and Joe Tryon — addressed to Scott that was sent late Friday.
As rumors began circulating Saturday night that the 2020 college football season wouldn’t happen, players from across the country then started sharing the #WeWantToPlay hashtag. The tweets also included a statement from Power Five Conference players.
“We all want to play football this season,” the statement read. “Establish universal mandated health & safety procedures and protocols to protect college-athletes against COVID-19 among all conferences throughout the NCAA. Give players the opportunity to opt out and respect their decision. Guarantee eligibility whether a player choose to play the season or not.
“Use our voices to establish open communication & trust between players and officials; ultimately create a college football players association representative of the players of all Power 5 Conferences.”
Scott touched on eligibility concerns after Tuesday’s announcement. Impacted athletes will have a scholarship guarantee, Scott said, adding that he would encourage the NCAA to support that when making upcoming decisions on eligibility, time to complete degrees and other academic issues. The NCAA did give an extra season of eligibility to spring sport athletes after their season was canceled.
UW impact
For UW, a postponed season means Jimmy Lake’s head coaching debut will be delayed.
“I’m so grateful for our medical team and our administration for the time they have committed the last several weeks and months to put together a plan as we worked to get back on the field this fall,” Lake said in a statement.
“The safety of our student-athlete and our staff will always be the number-one priority and we will continue to work with our medical staff, administration and the Pac-12 as we navigate the weeks ahead. We remain committed to providing the greatest experience possible for our players. We will continue to train and prepare and, when the medical experts determine the season can begin, The University of Washington Football Team will be ready to compete.”
The canceled season also means dire financial consequences for the athletic department.
UW already announced cost-saving measures for FY21, which began July 1. The cuts, which included a 10% cut in the staff line of the budget, should save UW nearly $13 million.
But in May, Cohen and chief financial officer Kate Cullen gave a presentation to the Board of Regents that modeled several possibilities for the financial challenges the university could face in the coming months.
The best-case scenario budget assumed a full fall season, football included, with fans in the stands. Even that scenario assumed an FY21 deficit of nearly $10 million that would drop to approximately $1.6 million with mitigation strategies.
During a phone interview with The News Tribune in June, UW athletic director Jen Cohen was asked about the possibility of a canceled football season.
“What is the impact? You wouldn’t have operations,” she said. “You wouldn’t have people to support those operations. I think schools don’t know yet what they would do in a scenario where there’s no football because they wouldn’t be able to offer other sports either if that was the case. Are you shutting down to revamp?”
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 12:55 PM.
