It is a fair question to ask, though we won’t know the answer for a few years at the very least: Will the Big Ten suffer from its decision to be the first Power Five conference to give up on the pursuit of fall football in 2020?
Plenty of the people I follow on #CollegeSportsTwitter think — quite reasonably, I might add — that if the SEC, ACC and Big 12 want to have a true College Football Playoff, even though the Big Ten and Pac-12 have opted out, that is their right.
It’s a fair point.
I have my reservations about holding a four-team playoff with only three major conferences left to play (if we’re able to play football at all), but the argument that the Big Ten and Pac-12 didn’t consult the other conferences, and therefore have to live with their own choices, is entirely reasonable.
After all, this wasn’t a group decision made by all Power Five conferences. EVERY conference is acting on its own, so if some conferences want to stop and other conferences want to play, there is no unanimous agreement on the ground rules. Therefore, the conferences sticking it out can reasonably claim to have the playoff — and the money from a playoff — for themselves.
I will address the playoff question in greater depth in a separate piece, but for now, I want to focus on this particular tension point: The Big 12 is a formidable conference, and Clemson of the ACC is a superpower, but we all know which is the strongest, deepest, toughest conference in major college football: It is the SEC.
The ACC was the best conference in the country in 2016, and the Big Ten has had its moments, but over the past three seasons, the SEC has been king, and there’s really no debate to be had. Georgia and Alabama vied for the 2017 title; LSU went unbeaten last year in a display of supreme dominance; Alabama made the 2018 title game with Georgia very nearly getting in the playoff as well. If Clemson isn’t winning the national championship these days, the SEC is. The SEC has placed at least one team in the national championship game of college football — BCS or playoff — in 13 of the last 14 seasons, the one exception being the 2014 season’s title game between Ohio State and Oregon.
So, as we contemplate a world in which the SEC, Big 12, and ACC all try to play college football while the Big Ten and Pac-12 sit on the sidelines, the really big drama — bigger than all the others — focuses on the two richest and most powerful conferences in college sports, the SEC and the Big Ten.
By most if not all measurements, the SEC and Big Ten are the top two money-making conferences in college sports, with the ACC and Big 12 behind them and the Pac-12 struggling to keep pace. They jockey for position, and the positions (one versus two) might change from time to time, but the SEC and the Big Ten are the top two. They have been for many years.
With the Big Ten’s decision to step away from fall football, though, some people are wondering if political, economic, and recruiting-based blowback is about to hit the Big Ten.
Let’s say that happens. Will the blowback fade away… or will it stick?
We don’t know, but it’s a fascinating question to entertain.
Let’s ask a follow-up question: What might cement a negative trend for the Big Ten?
A good answer: If the SEC not only plays football, but does so SUCCESSFULLY, with relatively minimal incident or disruption? If that DID happen, it would probably be a game-changer.
How much of a game-changer? Hard to say, but probably enough that a chunk of top-tier recruits who might have previously targeted Ohio State or Penn State would instead commit to elite SEC programs. While it might be just the thing Jim Harbaugh at Michigan would need to get a more level playing field in the Big Ten East Division, it could be a big negative for the Big Ten on a national level.
The SEC could push down Ohio State and create a long-term reality in which it will always have the upper hand against the Buckeyes in any possible playoff semifinal… and better yet, it might not even have to face Ohio State in many playoff games in the coming decade.
The opportunity for the SEC is obvious right now: If it can manage to play, it will turn some heads among recruits.
The obvious and necessary question to ask: Is it worth it in a pandemic, especially if players can’t be given hazard pay or guaranteed health care?
The obvious and necessary follow-up question: If the SEC isn’t forced to shut down its fall season in the coming weeks, and it gets to the point where it at least tries to play a Week 1 game, what will be the standards used by the league to either continue or discontinue play in the event of an outbreak on one SEC team?
I have my own views of what the standards should be, but the point is less on setting a standard and more on the larger possibility that the SEC could be so consumed with driving a stake into the Big Ten that it overplays its hand and gets caught in a coronavirus web of its own making.
The SEC might think this is a World War I in college sports, a chance to destroy a rival conference. To be clear, I understand the rationale and can see why the SEC would go forward under these conditions. The Big Ten, one could argue, might have made a reasonable decision to shut down, but still conducted a TERRIBLE process which was slipshod, arbitrary and abrupt.
The SEC, by all appearances, is being cautious. It is certainly not a mistake to wait a few more weeks — that can’t hurt anyone — but if it dives into the lake known as Week 1 (playing actual live games) and then gets hit with a severe coronavirus outbreak, this could all boomerang back at the SEC… and the politics of recruiting might shift to the Big Ten in the end, undercutting the SEC’s prime goal.
The SEC could be entering a world war of college sports.
As with any decision to enter a war, one must consider the damage and the cost first, before considering the possible upside of victory.
First, do no harm, as any doctor or medical expert would tell you.