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Could Big Ten football be coming much sooner than anticipated?
While the 2020 fall season was postponed, it was stated that the conference was eyeing a spring season, initially. Though, with some pushback, a winter season seemed to start to take shape, with the idea that the Big Ten would start shortly after the New Year, playing in indoor stadiums in the regional footprint, with an eight-week schedule.
However, given that the College Football Playoff is going on as scheduled with the SEC, ACC and Big 12 playing, and with a grand uproar by the players and their parents, it seems that the Big Ten is now looking to accommodate those who want to play by working towards a late-fall start to the season.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
“With parents groups continuing to demand Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren further explain the reasons for shutting down the 2020 football season and eight Nebraska players filing a lawsuit in an attempt to overturn that decision, the league’s football coaches continue working on a revised schedule.
According to two college football people familiar with the Big Ten, those talks have generated a new option, starting a Big Ten season of at least eight games the week of Thanksgiving.”
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Should that happen, it could make things interesting for the College Football Playoff selection committee, as it had intended to start its rankings starting Nov. 17.
Though the Nebraska lawsuit certainly ups the ante, it seems as if Ohio State has really been pushing the envelope towards seeing the field. The same day that commissioner Kevin Warren released his statement that the season would not be revisited, OSU athletic director Gene Smith said the following in a statement that evening:
While a decision has been made by the presidents of the Big Ten Conference to postpone the fall season, we view this as a temporary delay, and Dr. Johnson has directed us to prepare for the possibility of bringing at least some of our fall sports back to practice and competition by the end of the year. We are actively planning for the winter and spring seasons for all sports, including the return of football.
Bringing fall sports back to competition by the end of the year seemed to fly in the face of what Warren had intimated was possible.
Still, there’s a lot of questions to be answered. Would the conference actually make a drastic about-face after the stern decision to postpone? Would teams play then in their home stadiums? Locally, with a late fall season, would those Michigan football players who opted out to focus on the NFL draft — Jalen Mayfield and Ambry Thomas — potentially return, assuming neither had signed with an agent?
Stay tuned, this story continues to evolve from one day to the next.