Everything you need to know about the Pac-12's decision to cancel fall sports

BOULDER — It finally happened.

The Pac-12 presidents voted unanimously Tuesday to cancel all competitions until Jan. 1, 2021 at the earliest. That means there will be no fall sports, including football, though those competitions could be rescheduled to the spring of 2021. The men’s basketball season will have a delayed start. Teams may be allowed to practice before 2021, depending on the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are still plenty of questions to be answered, but I’ll do my best to answer some of them below.

Colorado athletic director Rick George will meet with the media Wednesday morning to share more information about where CU stands.

Isn’t the timing kind of strange?

In some ways, yes, this is a weird time for the Pac-12 to shut things down.

Just 11 days prior to calling off the season, the Pac-12 released its schedule for this fall.

Less than a week ago, CU sent season ticket holders an email that gave them to opt in or out to attending games this fall.

So what changed?

Well, we don’t know exactly, but there is one really important distinction that must be made: the conference’s athletic directors make a majority of the decisions but the big stuff—like shutting down the entire season—is up to the presidents of the Pac-12 schools.

It’s up to the athletic directors—at least for the most part—to put together a plan for the season, including when to play games and what protocols to put in place to mitigate the risks of COVID-19.

It’s up to the presidents—at least for the most part—to decide whether the games can actually be played.

On Tuesday, they said it was time to pull the plug.

But why now?

Another good question.

The Pac-12 wasn’t scheduled to play its first game until Sept. 26, which leaves plenty of time for the coronavirus to die down, making college football much safer. There’s no guarantee that the world will be in better shape at that point, of course, but the possibility still exists.

There are a couple of reasons that the Pac-12 could have used to decide that today was the day to call off the fall season.

1. The conference wasn’t looking for stagnation with the coronavirus, they were looking for improvement.Even though the COVID-19 outbreaks within the Pac-12 footprint haven’t been exacerbated in recent weeks, they also haven’t gotten all that much better. There’s a very real possibility that the last time the presidents met, they set case-number benchmarks that needed to be met for the plan to continue past Tuesday.With camps set to open Aug. 17—which means increased contact between players—the conference may have decided to raise the safety standards.
2. There’s a new link between heart disease and COVID-19.Researchers have found that the coronavirus is tied to an increased rate of myocarditis, which is essentially scarring of the heart. It is not good.The researchers have found that this scarring can occur to young people who were asymptomatic when they had COVID-19. Sports Illustrated reported Sunday that 10 college football players have “COVID-related heart impacts.”
   

   Update on the Pac-12: Pac-12 coaches and ADs got a sobering medical perspective from a group of Pac-12 doctors last night. Source called it “eye opening” and the information on myocarditis “made it real.” 1/2

   — Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 11, 2020

   As with any new disease, the long-term impacts can’t be known until somebody who has had COVID-19 makes it to that stage of the disease. The residual effects are relatively unknown, and there could be more long-term problems than myocarditis.

   Pac-12 players are pushing for the COVID-19 liability waivers they signed to be nullified as part of the #WeAreUnited movement. They are also calling for all medical costs related to COVID-19 to be covered by their school.

   With troubling new medical information available, and the possibility of having to pay the players’ medical costs, shutting down all team activities quickly may have been a priority for the conference.

But I thought the players wanted to play?

A lot of them do. Some of them don’t. But that isn’t really the point.

College football players, administrators and coaches are supposed to follow the best practices in a pandemic, just like everybody else. Right now, that means avoiding getting within six feet of others and wearing a mask when in public. The average person isn’t supposed to break those policies, even if they’re willing to risk getting the virus and letting college football players violate those policies would be an exception to the logic that has been used nationwide since the beginning of the pandemic.

It’s not just about whether the players want to play, it’s about making responsible decisions.

If a player gets COVID-19, the best data says that he will get at least one other person sick. Maybe it’s somebody within the program who’s willing to take the risk of getting COVID-19 or maybe it’s somebody outside the program and the disease is passed around the community.

Putting yourself into high-risk situations isn’t just putting yourself at risk, it’s putting everybody you come into contact with—and everybody those people come into contact with, and so on—at risk as well.

The NBA and NHL created bubbles. The bubbles, obviously, reduce the risk of the athletes getting sick, but the bubbles also contain any outbreak. That means those sports’ return to play has a very small chance of negatively impacting the larger community.

How closed off can college football players be from the rest of society, especially when they’re attending classes every day? Other students on campus, as well as campus staff, faculty and Boulder community members would be more likely to contract the coronavirus if football is played. If student-athletes are as isolated as possible from outsiders, that risk, I would guess, would be very, very small. But I’m not nearly qualified to say what the risk to the community would be, I’m only qualified to explain the thought process.

Could some student-athletes be safer on a college campus than at home in their communities? Certainly. That’s why a number of student-athletes have opted to stay at their school despite their football seasons already being canceled. This is important to keep in mind as well.

Is the increased safety of student-athletes on a college campus worth more than the decreased safety of the community—in whatever amount that may be—if football is played? Again, I am nowhere near qualified to say.

What I will say is this: If college football administrators had involved student-athletes more in the decision-making process over the last five months, the Pac-12 may not have made the same decision on Tuesday, for a number of different reasons.

What does this mean financially for CU?

It isn’t good.

In an ESPN article in May, director of the sports business program at Washington University Patrick Rishe projected that the average Power 5 school would lose at least $62 million if the 2020 college football season wasn’t played.

That information is fairly dated at this point, but it’s what we have so we’re going to run with it.

$62 million is a lot of money and losing that much is going to cause problems for every athletic department. Sports may be cut. Jobs will be cut. It’s tough to say what else will happen.

The good news is that CU came into the pandemic as one of the financially-healthiest athletic departments in the country. They have as good of odds as anybody to handle this massive shortfall well. Again, we just don’t know what that will look like.

It is worth noting that the Pac-12 has secured a huge loan that will give every member institution, including Colorado, an $83 million dollar loan to be paid back over the next 10 years with 3.75% interest.

That’s a good rate that will allow this financial blow to be spread across the next decade, but it likely won’t be enough to totally mitigate cuts across the Buffs’ athletic department.

Could there still be a spring season?

Yes.

That determination will be made at a later date—October? November? December?—but the hope is still to play this season in some way.

A spring season would come with plenty of obstacles. Would players opt out in favor of the draft? Would playing two football seasons in one calendar year, assuming the fall ’21 season goes on as scheduled, take too much of a toll on players’ bodies? What if COVID-19 is just as prevalent when the spring comes around?

Smarter people could ask better questions than those, too.

But, for now, we can hold onto hope.

Will student-athletes keep their scholarships?

Yes.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott told reporters Tuesday that all student-athletes will hold onto their scholarships, but the conference still has one hurdle to clear in this area: The NCAA needs to extend student-athletes’ eligibility.

The Pac-12 doesn’t have jurisdiction over eligibility, so they’ll need the NCAA to decide to give student-athletes an extra year. This seems likely, and Scott said the Pac-12 is applying pressure on the NCAA to come to this conclusion, but it is worth monitoring until it becomes official.

No matter what, student-athletes will be able to finish their education.

What’s up with the rest of college football?

Things are slowly getting worse, but here’s the briefest of updates:

After the changes with the Big Ten and Pac-12, here's the current status of Fall football across all conferences and divisions (8/11 4pm ET)—Thanks to those who've updated us and feel free to DM us corrections: pic.twitter.com/XLqtbIYgJQ

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) August 11, 2020

Of the Power 5 conferences, the Big 10 and the Pac-12 are the only ones to say they won’t play football this fall. The Big 12, ACC and SEC are still on course to play their modified schedule, but that could change in the coming days. The Big 12 in particular seems to be the next domino to fall, whether they choose to stay the course or call it quits. Their decision will factor in to what the other conferences do.

https://twitter.com/38Godfrey/status/1293262342915072000?s=20