When rumors and reports started to materialize that the Big Ten was on the doorstep with the grim reaper, waiting to kill the fall football season for 2020, things began to turn to some interesting hypotheticals. Namely, what if a team like Ohio State decided to thumb its nose at the Big Ten and go play in another conference for one season?
It’s an interesting point, and it would be pretty fun to see the Buckeyes play at venues like The Swamp in Gainesville, or at LSU, Bama — any number of places really.
However, if you had your hopes up on that becoming a real development after the news broke today of the official postponement of the fall season, athletic director Gene Smith pretty much squashed that idea according to a report from Lettermen Row.
He stopped by to talk to reporters and rather than digging the heels in and continuing to find another opportunity for the Buckeye players to play in another format, he toed the company line.
“Not leaving. That’s not realistic,” Smith told reporters outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “We’ve been a member of the Big Ten for a long time, we share the same values as our member institutions. We all know our history and tradition, I don’t need to give you that speech. We’re in the Big Ten, we’re not looking to play someone else outside of our conference, we have a contract that we are obligated to with our television partners, so that’s not happening. We’re mentally moving and shifting to the spring as an option.”
Ohio State not leaving Big Ten, embracing spring schedule https://t.co/B6ZDl7nQMF
— Lettermen Row (@LettermenRow) August 11, 2020
So, there you have it.
It was probably a pie-in-the-sky idea anyway, and one that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey more or less shot down anyway for some of the same reasons on the Dan Patrick show earlier Tuesday.
So if you were holding out hope of a Braveheart type of scorch the Earth fight to get the season off the ground still for the Ohio State football program this fall, it isn’t happening.
It’s time to settle in and move on.
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