No one wanted this, but we are left to face the depressing, miserable truth: The college football season is on the brink after the Mid-American Conference pulled the plug on all fall sports Saturday morning.
Shortly after the MAC’s decision to punt on the season, the Big Ten might not have punted, but it certainly did take a five-yard delay-of-game penalty.
The Big Ten released a statement in which it chose to limit physical activity in preseason practices. Full pads are not yet allowed, preventing Big Ten teams from being able to ramp up their level of preparation for a possible start to the season.
This is a conspicuous and large problem for an obvious reason: The Big Ten, unlike most of the other Power Five conferences, planned an earlier start to the season, before Labor Day. The Big Ten is the only Power Five conference which has — to this point — has mapped out a specific schedule which starts before Labor Day. The Big 12 has been planning on a schedule which starts before Labor Day, but it hasn’t released it.
You can see why the Big Ten is now at the center of the college football universe: If the Big Ten — which is trying to start its season earlier and has scheduled games earlier than the SEC, ACC, and Pac-12 — can’t provide full-pad practices anytime soon, the early chunk of its schedule will be wiped out, and the house of cards will crumble. The Big Ten is likely to call it quits and postpone football before any other Power Five conference.
Once that happens, the College Football Playoff is essentially done. The focus in college football would shift to the SEC, which might want to play games on its own even if no playoff exists.
That would be a hard sell with SEC athletes, however.
Keep your eyes on the Big Ten. That’s where the next really big piece of college football news is likely to emerge from, though the AAC is also a conference to watch.