Big Ten Leads ‘Power Five’ Halting Football, Free Press Says
Big Ten Leads ‘Power Five’ in Halting Football, Free Press Says
(Bloomberg) -- The Big Ten became the first “Power Five” conference to cancel football for the upcoming season, forgoing a major revenue source as the Covid-19 pandemic upends college sports, the Detroit Free Press reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.
School presidents voted Sunday to cancel fall sports and an official announcement is expected Tuesday, the newspaper said. The tally was 12-2, with only the University of Nebraska and the University of Iowa voting to play, Dan Patrick said Monday on his radio show. Over the weekend, the Mid-American Conference became the first in the FBS, or Football Bowl Subdivision, to scrap its 2020 season.
Several of college football’s biggest powers stand to lose more than $100 million each from a canceled season, according to data provided by Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus. Revenue losses could reach “nine figures in the case of no competition,” Sandy Barbour, Pennsylvania State University’s vice president for intercollegiate athletics, said in an Aug. 6 statement.
U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, urged the conference presidents and chancellors in a letter Monday not to cancel college football.
“Life is about trade-offs,” said Sasse, former president of Midland University in Nebraska. “There are no guarantees that college football will be completely safe -- that’s absolutely true; it’s always true. But the structure and discipline of football programs is very likely safer than what the lived experience of 18- to 22-year-olds will be if there isn’t a season.”
Echoing what many players are saying, President Donald Trump tweeted using the WeWantToPlay hashtag, “The student-athletes have been working too hard for their season to be cancelled.”
“While we appreciate the Big Ten’s recently announced plan for the upcoming season, we believe that the conference’s proposal falls short in certain areas,” the Big Ten players wrote in their statement. “Given that the players are the primary stakeholders in the business of college sports, we believe any course of action moving forward needs to include player input. We are deeply disappointed with the lack of leadership demonstrated by the NCAA with respect to player safety during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
After the Mid-American Conference canceled its season on Saturday, players across the country, sensing the season was in peril, began to voice their support for playing. Among the most vocal were Ohio State University quarterback Justin Fields and Clemson University quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
Schools not known as sports powerhouses began shutting down their seasons earlier. NCAA Division III Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and Division II Morehouse College, a prominent historically Black college in Atlanta, both backed off in June. The Ivy League, the first to shut down sports in March, scrapped the fall season in July and the 13-member California Collegiate Athletic Association nixed sports for the coming term in May.
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