The Pac-12 football schedule was released on Friday afternoon. We sorted through it — the good points and the bad points — and didn’t even begin to cover all the bases. That process continues this weekend with more reactions to other components of the schedule.
One of the bigger and more eye-popping aspects of this schedule was the number of Friday games on the slate. This rated as a considerable surprise, given that having teams playing on short rest and on an irregular is a recipe for all sorts of complications.
This isn’t a matter of any specific school; this is about a much larger reality in which Team A (any team which is being asked to play on a Friday) might have to play on a Friday and then face its next opponent on a Saturday, with that opponent having played on a Saturday.
The Pac-12 is creating situations in which two teams will enter a game having had different amounts of days off. Why invite that complication?
The other obvious cause for alarm is that many of these Friday games are short weeks in which a team plays on a Saturday, then the next Friday. This is not a situation in which Friday games are being played by teams who just had an off week.
College football is already asking a lot of these athletes to begin with in a pandemic; it also isn’t giving football players hazard pay or guaranteed health care, two things which — in a sane, well-oriented society — would have been given earlier this year once the pandemic hit.
In a pandemic, athletes should be given regular recovery time at the very least; squeezing them into short weeks, such that recovery time could be less than optimal, seems like an unnecessary risk.
Real talk: The Pac-12 is having these Friday games due to television. I get it. Anyone can see that.
It invites the question: If football is this important, doesn’t it indicate that athletes are essential workers worthy of extra compensation? Not providing that yet still going ahead with Friday games is a display of weakness by the Pac-12, which should have fought harder for all-Saturday schedules and regular intervals between games for all teams in ALL situations.