2020 Pac-12 football schedule released

The Pac-12 schedule is out!

The Pac-12 Conference released its 10-game, league-only game schedule on Friday, providing an actual implementation of its stated plan announced weeks earlier.

The design of the schedule has an obvious intent: to allow for COVID-19-related postponements and still play the conference championship game no later than December 19, which is when the SEC has already committed to play its title game, and when other Power Five conferences could play their title games if COVID-19 postponements occur.

The Pac-12 season starts on September 26, however, which represents a plot twist. The start date was expected by many league insiders to be Sept. 19, so the league felt it had to push the season back a week. The period from Sept. 26 through Dec. 12 encompasses 12 Saturdays. You can do the quick math and see what the conference is trying to do. With 10 games on the schedule and 12 Saturdays before Dec. 19, the Pac-12 has two flexible slots in which to make up postponed games, thereby giving the league a chance to play all 10 conference games by Dec. 12, which would then enable the league to stage its conference title game on Dec. 19.

If the league is somehow able to get through the 10-game schedule with no more than two sets of COVID-19-related postponements, the conference title game could be played on Dec. 19. The flexibility of the schedule is its best feature, though starting the season on Sept. 26 instead of Sept. 19 reduces flexibility instead of increasing it. That is a puzzler.

What is bad about this schedule? That is a complicated question. A responsible answer begins with an emphasis which transcends the Pac-12 itself.

All of the Power Five conferences are trying to play at least 10 games in the 2020 regular season, so it’s not as though the Pac-12 can be — or should be — singled out. It is merely doing what other Power Five leagues are also doing.

My point of emphasis with adjusted college football scheduling in a pandemic is that the sport should be making an attempt to maximize its chances of playing some games, rather than going for broke and trying to play a large number of games. I explained my thoughts right after the Miami Marlins outbreak, noting that if games were scheduled every three weeks, college football — in exchange for scheduling a smaller number of games — would dramatically increase its chances of being able to play those games.

Phrased differently, college football would give itself a good chance of playing six games, instead of scheduling 10 games in a normal weekly format, which risks mass postponements and the possibility that the sport will fold the tent after one or two games.

The Pac-12 schedule therefore isn’t particularly enlightened (though its flexibility is a welcome attribute), but it also isn’t especially bad, either; the other Power Five conferences aren’t setting a better example.

More on the Pac-12 schedule later today and over the weekend at Trojans Wire.