Conference realignment this is not, but, in some ways, it might end up being bigger, as the very future of the NCAA as we know it might be at stake.
Either way, the current plight of college football is starting to look and feel a lot like those crazy days of 2010, when you couldn’t mow the lawn or go to the grocery store without feeling like you were going to miss something major.
While so much of the focus today is on whether or not there still will be a 2020 college football season this fall, the issues run way hotter than that. And they reach the boiling point when you get to the question of whether the uncertainty surrounding the summer of 2020 will be the event that inspires the major conferences to break away from the NCAA.
We’ve got primetime players talking about unionizing, which has to been a terrifying word for the NCAA. We’ve got other players saying they want to play this fall and still more saying it’s not safe. Who’s to say which side is right?
We’ve got coaches making comments and then issuing statements to clarify what they meant so people don’t freak out or at least don’t freak out further.
And we’ve got so many discussions happening behind closed doors that no one really knows what’s ahead, from one to day to the next or even one hour later.
Tweets are being deleted and no one knows anything while everyone knows everything at the same time.
In short, it’s total chaos.
As the Big 12 Conference continues to move forward with meetings and discussions about the upcoming football season and its reworked schedule, fans everywhere are bracing for the news nobody wants to hear — that the fall football seasons have been canceled because of COVID-19.
They’ve already done that at some levels and in some conferences. But we’re not there yet at the Power Five level.
Could we get there? Absolutely.
Could we reach the point where some of the Power Five conferences elect to play while others don’t? I don’t see why not.
Could we have programs or athletes from one conference effectively joining another just for 2020 so we can see something that resembles college football as we know it? Six months ago I would’ve called you crazy for saying yes to that question. But nothing seems crazy anymore.
Except for all of it, of course.
Multiple reports on Monday indicated that the powers that be in the Big 12 would meet in the next 24-48 hours to decide the fate of fall sports, with a specific eye on the football season.
So now we wait.
We’ll wait for news. We’ll wait for calls to be returned and sources to fill us in on the latest.
We’ll wait for reports from coast to coast and for someone to step up and make a decision about what comes next, not knowing, of course, whether what they decide or say will actually happen.
It would all be easier to follow and digest if there were more obvious right and wrong answers. And maybe there are.
If that’s the case, it would mostly just be nice to hear them.
