Josh Webb: The Pac-12 did the right thing

It was just not much of a choice in the end.

The Pac-12 has canceled the fall football season, first reported by Brett McMurphy. The Mountain West, MAC, Big Ten, and now the Pac-12 that have canceled their seasons. The ACC and SEC still hope to play (and the Big 12 is being typically indecisive), but they’re going to have to explain why their plan is better than the plans of the other major conferences, which all have access to the same medical information, data, and advice from doctors. It’s going to be hard to justify playing a season with only two or three Power Five conferences, especially if any of those players come down with a severe case of COVID-19.

It’s simply the right decision at this time. There are too many factors out there to control. Even with team buses and chartered flights, players still have to go through regular airport security and walk past other passengers to board their flight. Then you have the current lack of testing initiatives led by the President of the United States. It’s hard to justify the amount of testing the ACC or SEC would have to do when regular people are struggling to get tested once in their locality. The optics of it would be mind-boggling. They still are mind boggling.

The reality of lengthy travel — for instance, a Kentucky-Alabama game in the SEC — also poses different risks. Then one has to worry about various complicated scenarios. For instance, what if the other team had sick players who had previously tested negative but slipped through the cracks just before a game and took the field somehow. There’s no real way to guarantee safety for these players or the athletic support staff. It’s all an incredible risk for the sake of playing what is now a shell of a season. The idea that they’re going to try to play two seasons in one year is still something that has to be addressed. We’ll do that in a separate column. Right now the conferences will have time to address that, but it’s going to be important to do so.

As it currently stands, a modified non-fall schedule could have players finishing sometime in April or May and then having to turn around and come back in August to begin the next season of play. The human body wasn’t meant to go through that much punishment, and just because they may be young enough and naive enough to think they can handle it, the adults in the room need to recognize that it’s massively unhealthy and could lead to a major increase in injuries during the follow-up season in the fall of 2021.

It’s okay to not have a year of football. It really is. We spend most of our time talking about player safety and improving the quality of life within the game, but then you hear of schools wanting to play during a pandemic; I’m looking right at you, Nebraska.

There are so many mixed messages being sent by those in charge, people who are supposed to be making the responsible decisions. Maybe the pressure of journalists highlighting the issues with trying a season actually did some good. If so, good for them. All we know right now is that most of college football appears to be doing the right thing.