On fall football revote: ‘The Big Ten has to get this right,’ says Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports

Pete Thamel told BTN that the Big Ten has to get the decision and messaging right with the potential reversal of course with fall football.

We’re still waiting on some kind of flare to be sent up in the air on this Big Ten fall football drama, but as the conference continues to survive in the lifeboat of criticism, it hasn’t come yet.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: You can’t blame Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren and the League Presidents and Chancellors for the conservative decision to postpone the football season out of an abundance of caution amid the COVID-19 pandemic. What you can do, however, is criticize the messaging and decision-making, as well as the silence that’s occurred since.

And because of that, Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel says the Big Ten has to really work on getting things right from here on out. There are sources and reports that the conference is close to perhaps voting on a start date here soon, and it’s imperative that it’s done the right way.

Thamel points to new commissioner Warren and five new university leaders as a reason for all the criticism and headaches thus far. He says they need to work together to find common ground.

“The Big Ten needs to get this right, and they need to message it right,” Thamel said. “You’re talking about a new commissioner that’s been there less than a year, five of your fourteen presidents who are trying to balance the trillion-dollar higher ed. businesses that they oversee.”

“Five of the fourteen are new, and because five of the fourteen are new, they clearly felt blowback at many campuses because of the initial decision. They’re going to make sure things like testing — things like contact tracing are there, and that the Big Ten can definitively say ‘this is why things are decisively different than they were a month ago.'”

We couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, the way things have been handled this far will never be forgotten. There’s a chance to pull that back a little with the right decision and communication, but time is running out. It’s a fine balance, but that’s why these leaders have been placed in the position of power.

 

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