Tag: Bob Bowlsby

Big 12 Commissioner releases statement on Senator Rubio’s NIL bill

Big 12 Commissioner released a statement following a bill introduced by Florida Senator Marco Rubio that would athletes to be compensated.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill that would protect the NCAA from being challenged in court if they changed their rules that would allow athletes to earn endorsements. For years there have plenty of discussions and arguments that athletes should be allowed to earn money while remaining eligible to play in collegiate sports. If schools are allowed to bank on the athletes, then why not the athletes themselves?

The Big 12 Conference’s website released the following statement from Commissioner Bob Bowlsby.

We are grateful for Senator Rubio’s consideration of the needs of America’s student-athletes.  A nationwide system of rules is imperative to national recruitment and fair competition.  We look forward to collaborating with our elected officials to affect the necessary change.

Further, we are committed to working with policymakers to craft a system that permits student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness while also maintaining our uniquely American, education-based collegiate athletics model.

Recently the state of Florida passed their own law that would allow athletes to cash in on their name, image and likeness. The bill introduced by Rubio would make one uniform law versus having 50 different states having different laws. Which could shift the competitive balance if one state’s law allowed for athletes to make more in one particular state versus another.

It protects the athletes. It allows them to be compensated. These kids deserve to make a little bit of money while they’re in college, at the same time it prevents the implosion of college athletics. – Senator Rubio 

 

Big 12 basketball tournament to remain in Kansas City through 2025

The Big 12 Conference and the city of Kansas City have agreed to keep the basketball championship tournament there through 2025.

The Big 12 Conference announced that they will keep the postseason basketball tournament in Kansas City. The original deal ran through 2020 and will now remain there for five more seasons according to their website.

We were all looking forward to having our basketball championships back together in Kansas City in 2020. While the pandemic didn’t allow that to happen, this extension provides an additional year for our institutions and fans to take part in the Big 12 basketball atmosphere that has become synonymous with Kansas City.

With the plans we had in place to celebrate the men’s and women’s basketball championships being back to together in Kansas City, the 2020 Big 12 Basketball Championships were poised to be especially exciting,“ says Kathy Nelson, President & CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission. “The unfortunate cancellation of those events due to COVID-19 definitely left our community wanting more. We are excited and grateful that the Big 12 Conference has decided to extend our agreement to host both the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships through 2025. – Bob Bowlsby, Big 12 Commissioner

There was some hope that the Big 12’s basketball championship tournaments would move to a more centralized location for all schools. Cities such as Oklahoma City, Oklahoma or Dallas, Texas. Unfortunately with the recent contract extension between Kansas City and the conference won’t allow that to happen until at least 2026.

The Texas Longhorns are hoping to have more competitive teams in the upcoming season. The men’s team will return with everyone from the 2019-20 team with the addition of the number one recruit in the country Greg Brown.

The women’s team will be under new leadership with the recent hire of Vic Schaefer, who came over from Mississippi State. There is a bit of excitement given the direction he had his previous program going.

NCAA President Mark Emmert has a strong opinion on the upcoming season

NCAA President Mark Emmert told congress that they could shorten the season due to COVID-19, the only problem is he doesn’t have the power.

According to Zach Barnett of Football Scoops, NCAA President Mark Emmert told congress they could shorten the college football season. In Barnett’s article he stated what Emmert participated in conference call with other commissioners.

NCAA president Mark Emmert told Congressional leaders that the upcoming college football season could be shortened and some schools may not play.

Emmert participated in a call Wednesday alongside commissioners of the NFL, NHL, PGA and NASCAR, which served to update the White House’s re-opening task force on various sports return-to-play plans.

In the call, Emmert said the season could be shortened where, at the FBS level, conference championship games are played by Thanksgiving, according to the New York Times. This change would shorted the regular season by two weeks; it would also mirror the schedule many universities have adopted, where the fall semester will begin on time but in-person instruction will end at the Thanksgiving break.

The biggest problem with the comments from Emmert is that he doesn’t have the power to take such a stance. While he can rule over the NCAA March Madness tournaments, football is a completely different animal. When it comes to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) or Division I, it is the conference commissioners who run the college football landscape.

Essentially the Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby has more power than Emmert. All scheduling is done at the collegiate level with schools allowed to schedule their own non-conference opponents and the conference decides on their remaining schedule.

In the Barnett piece, he goes on to state that the College Football Playoff committee is expecting to play a full schedule in 2020.

Big 12 Conference planning for disruptions of 2020 college football season

How college football is played in 2020 remains the big picture question that has no answers today. Bob Bowlsby is planning for disruption.

How college football is played in 2020 remains the big picture question that has no answers on May 28.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has talked previously about his concern over a disruption of a college football season when the normal flu season starts in the late fall and how that impacts college athletics. On Wednesday, he told CBS Sports HQ that the Big 12 Conference is planning for a disruption of a season.

“I expect we will have some outbreaks during the course of the school year on campuses and within athletics departments,” Bowlsby said. “We’ve been told to expect a bumpy road, so that’s what we’re preparing. I don’t think much of hope as a strategy, but we hope things will go smoothly and prepare as if they won’t be.”

Bowlsby isn’t talking in reference to the months of Aug., Sept. or even Oct., but the months to follow. That’s when the conference championship hunt is on. When conference championships are won and when national championships are being played for.

“We aren’t going to have the benefit of making lots of plans well in advance,” Bowlsby said. “We’re trying to get back to campus and workouts and some semblance of normalcy. Beyond that, we have a 12-game schedule. We start on Labor Day weekend and we’ll have to play it by ear. We don’t want to put anybody at risk from a health standpoint. We need to go through this and recognize that we’re dealing with mostly young, healthy athletes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be transmitting the disease.

“We’re going to have some difficulties during the course of the year, and I fully expect we’ll have some disruptions. We are going to do everything we can to minimize the likelihood of those things happening and to optimize the disinfectant process that we have in our weight rooms, locker rooms and training rooms. And we’ll practice good social distancing,” Bowlsby continued. “It will be somewhat unique to individual institutions. This has always been managed by governors and public health officials and, to some extent, mayors. Soon it will be in the hands of university presidents and chancellors and then athletic directors.”

Bowlsby said playing on an uneven playing field has been the reality this whole time, so that this coronavirus pandemic isn’t causing something that isn’t systematically happening already.

Oklahoma is scheduled to begin the 2020 season on Sept. 5 at home against Missouri State.

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Big 12 announces date to resume voluntary workouts

Many positive steps have been taken within the Big 12 to provide hope that the college football season could take place as scheduled.

After months of uncertainty, normalcy appears to be within arm’s length. Continue reading “Big 12 announces date to resume voluntary workouts”

Big 12 commissioner on the college football season: ‘I think we’ll have fans in the stands’

There has not been a bigger conversation since momentum towards a college football season happening than if fans will be in the stands.

There has not been a bigger conversation since momentum towards a college football season happening than if fans will be allowed in the stands.

Chinese baseball is allowing some sort of fans. NASCAR has not yet since its restart, nor the Korean Baseball League or the Bundesliga soccer league in Europe. However, the college football season is still over three months away.

The most prominent figure in this decision being made for Oklahoma and its conference brethren spoke on this topic on Thursday.

“It really depends on how things go between now and then,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby. “You know, I think it’s fair to ask the question if it’s safe for the kids to be on the field in close contact with one another, why wouldn’t it be safe for fans to be in the stands at social distance? Now, you know you take an 80,000 seat stadium knowing you may end up with 20,000 people there. Going back to the psychology of public assembly, we may find even if a everybody wanted to buy a ticket, that the attendance would actually be soft for the reasons we’ve discussed.

“I think we’ll have fans in the stands, but when you think about how difficult it is to do hospital level disinfecting in a weight room, or a locker room or a training room, think about doing it for an entire stadium. The entry ways. The lines at the restrooms. The lines at the concessions stands. Sitting that far a part in the stands. It’s a very large undertaking. If there is a bright side to all this, some of the people that would have been in the stadium will be added to the TV audience and the radio audience. It can be a good thing for because people are going to follow their favorite university and their favorite team. If there is any glimmering of a bright spot, that’s probably what it is.”

The NCAA will start to allow voluntary workouts on June 1, but not every conference will start those on that day. No official word has been made on the college football season. Nor has any official word come from the Big 12 on players returning to campus for voluntary workouts.

Oklahoma’s Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium seats more than 85,000 people during homes games on college football Saturdays. No word from Oklahoma has been official said other than hypothesizing and thinking out loud about what could happen.

The Sooners are set to start the 2020 season on Sept. 5 against Missouri State at home.

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Big 12 commissioner believes fans will be able to attend games

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby recently joined Big 12 Radio on SiriusXM to discuss the chances of fans attending college sporting events.

If you’re hoping to attend a college football game this season, you may be in luck. Continue reading “Big 12 commissioner believes fans will be able to attend games”

NCAA to allow on campus voluntary workouts starting June 1st

NCAA has voted to allow voluntary on campus workouts for three major sports starting June 1st. This is a big step towards sports this fall.

The big question surrounding fall sports during this COVID-19 quarantine mostly began with when teams would be allowed back on campus. According to multiple reports, that date has now been set. According to multiple reporters including Brett McMurphy of Stadium.

Football, men’s and women’s basketball can resume athletic activities on a voluntary basis as of June 1st. This is just another domino that needed to fall in order athletics to resume in a somewhat normal fashion. With this new ruling, players such as Sam Ehlinger who have been holding workouts in his garage can return to campus.

There isn’t a date set as of yet for organized team activities but his falls right in line with some schools who have set June 1, 2020 as a date for athletes to return to school to begin football practice. With Tom Herman and the staff already back on campus, it should only be a matter of time before the team is on the practice field and getting acclimated to the new offense under Mike Yurcich.

It was recently reported by the Austin American-Statesman that Longhorns football games are not likely to transpire per the Austin Public Health Officials. Athletic Director Chris Del Conte stated that the school has no intentions to alter their plans when it comes to the 2020 football schedule so that remains to be one situation to monitor.

There is quite a bit of money at play here with football returning. Based on the revenue generated by the Big 12 Conference’s television deals, they could survive the 2020 season without fans but beyond that it would be hard to fathom they could keep football alive without fans in attendance.

Big 12 commissioner says they need athletes to return by early July at latest

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is more in favor of a mid to late June return for Big 12 student-athletes’ return to campuses.

With the NCAA Division I council to vote on whether teams can begin team activities and have student-athletes report to campus as soon as June 1 on Wednesday, the Big 12 may not be so quick to jump the gun.

Per a report from 247Sports, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is more in favor of a mid to late June return for Big 12 student-athletes’ return to campuses. The sentiment stems from presidents and chancellors of the Big 12’s member schools.

“If I were going to handicap it I would say we are more likely later in the month of June than we are on June 1, but I could be wrong on that,” Bowlsby told Brandon Marcello of 247Sports.

Bowlsby said that a mid-June/early July return would have to happen because if they were to return later that the college football season should be pushed back.

When it comes to securing testing and implementing proper protocols, each member institution will be responsible for themselves but Bowlsby said that the Big 12 is going to do what’s in the best interest of their student-athletes “first and foremost”.

Despite all outside factors, Oklahoma is still set to open the 2020 football season, playing host to Missouri State on September 5.

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Texas Longhorns football staff to return to campus

The Texas football staff is set to return to campus on a part-time basis per Anwar Richardson of Orange Bloods.

While the entire football program has been operating from home in regards to schooling and virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the coaching staff plans to return to campus on Monday.

Anwar Richardson of OrangeBloods.com recently reported that some coaches will be in their offices for particular days of the week moving forward, where social distancing practices will be stressed.

Although the coaching staff is currently only returning to their offices on a part-time basis, this feels like a small step towards some normalcy on the Forty Acres.

It’s particularly important for all new football coaches who recently joined Tom Herman’s staff. It will allow more time for each of them to get accustom to a new routine, office space, etc.

It’s still unclear when students will return to campus, but this news provides hope that it could come sooner rather than later.