When rumors and reports started to materialize that the Big Ten was on the doorstep with the grim reaper, waiting to kill the fall football season for 2020, things began to turn to some interesting hypotheticals. Namely, what if a team like Ohio State decided to thumb its nose at the Big Ten and go play in another conference for one season?

It’s an interesting point, and it would be pretty fun to see the Buckeyes play at venues like The Swamp in Gainesville, or at LSU, Bama — any number of places really.

However, if you had your hopes up on that becoming a real development after the news broke today of the official postponement of the fall season, athletic director Gene Smith pretty much squashed that idea according to a report from Lettermen Row.

He stopped by to talk to reporters and rather than digging the heels in and continuing to find another opportunity for the Buckeye players to play in another format, he toed the company line.

“Not leaving. That’s not realistic,” Smith told reporters outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “We’ve been a member of the Big Ten for a long time, we share the same values as our member institutions. We all know our history and tradition, I don’t need to give you that speech. We’re in the Big Ten, we’re not looking to play someone else outside of our conference, we have a contract that we are obligated to with our television partners, so that’s not happening. We’re mentally moving and shifting to the spring as an option.”

Ohio State not leaving Big Ten, embracing spring schedule https://t.co/B6ZDl7nQMF

— Lettermen Row (@LettermenRow) August 11, 2020

So, there you have it.

It was probably a pie-in-the-sky idea anyway, and one that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey more or less shot down anyway for some of the same reasons on the Dan Patrick show earlier Tuesday.

So if you were holding out hope of a Braveheart type of scorch the Earth fight to get the season off the ground still for the Ohio State football program this fall, it isn’t happening.

It’s time to settle in and move on.

 

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Things are on-schedule for Ohio State football, at least for now.

While appearing on local ESPN affiliate 97.1 The Fan on Wednesday, OSU athletic director Gene Smith confirmed that the program will begin walk-throughs on Friday, and if all goes well, will begin fall camp on Friday, August 7.

There were some questions on that timeline when the Buckeyes had to put a pause on voluntary workouts because of some positive COVID-19 tests through some of the first waves of testing, but since then, Ohio State has resumed workouts.

And as approved by the NCAA, the times for both walkthroughs and the beginning of fall camp are right on schedule and on-line as the earliest they can commence for OSU.

So, that should be some good news, albeit with a sense of cautious optimism still at best. Smith reiterated that there’s still a long way to go to determine what this fall will look like.

“I think everyone that works in the industry and everyone who’s paying attention understands that there are a lot of moving parts,” Smith said while appearing on The Fan. “We just need to be patient and allow our experts around this virus to continue to do their work and give us guidance so that we can make some leadership decisions.”

Smith did, however, indicate that the conference will do everything it can to have college football this season. He pointed to the flexibility of going to a conference-only schedule as a step in that direction.

“The flexibility that having September to schedule games or not provides us unbelievable opportunity,” Smith said. “The beauty of what we did, we felt, is that it gave us the ability to slide the schedule. If for some reason we can’t start on Sept. 5, we can slide it because we control the schedule. We’re still in the process of defining what the schedule will be, but it would give us the flexibility to slide. Hopefully, if we can’t play ‘x’ number of games, we can play ‘y’ number of games. We have young people whose futures are aligned with their opportunities to play this fall. We’ve got to make sure we don’t overreact and we give them a chance. I also think athletics can help galvanize our country and our communities in a storm or a crisis. I think if we’re fortunate enough to have sports, it will help us as we try and transition back to the new next.”

[lawrence-related id=33797]

Smith has a point, and one I have pondered and discussed with others. It seems like sports can reunite this country — and has during difficult times. It certainly helped the country heal after 9/11, and gives people something to rally around and be hopeful about.

We could use a little of that now as we all battle so-called hoaxes, mask-orders, shutdowns, and the debate of racial equality.

And while having full-fledged practices and workouts is somewhat concerning to Smith, he does appear to be a little more optimistic than when he got on a call with reporters last time. At that time, he painted a rather grim picture of where his mindset was, but has seen encouraging things with how things have been handled internally since.

“I don’t have a comfort level there yet, but I do relative to what we’ve done in the voluntary workout space, what we’re gonna start doing July 24th when we start walkthroughs, I feel really, really good.”

As we keep saying, we’ll have to just be patient on all of this and see how it all plays out. It seems to be an on-again, off-again college football love affair, but things are still heading in the right direction for now.

You can listen to the entire segment thanks to the Bishop and Laurinaitis Show below.

Gene Smith – @OSU_AD – (Ohio State Athletic Director) 7-22-20 https://t.co/jimgoKZBBD

— Bishop and Laurinaitis (@971BLS) July 22, 2020

 

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The optimism of having a college football season this fall is starting to wane, and so too is Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith’s. Just a short month ago, things looked promising. The COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have leveled off, teams got back to voluntary workouts on campus, and the NCAA approved a six-week preseason plan that would put teams in position for an on-time start to the college football season.

Heck, some colleges were even discussing the possibility of having some fans in the stand to take in the games as long as social distancing and local protocols were followed. Gene Smith was warming up to that idea.

Now, things are headed in a different, less promising direction. Just over the last couple of days, the Ivy League made the decision to cancel fall sports. Ohio State suspended all voluntary workouts for fall athletes after COVID-19 testing results, then the Big Ten announced that fall sports would follow a conference only slate of games if they were able to be played.

It’s that last few words that put the whole college football season — and other fall sports — in jeopardy. In fact, when appearing on BTN, Smith made it known that there’s is a real possibility that this thing goes a step further and that the cancellation of fall sports is a real possibility.

“I can’t reiterate enough the fact that we might not play,” Smith said when being interviewed on BT. “We just might not. And I think that people need to understand that.”

There is more to the interview, but that’s the main takeaway. People need to start preparing for the real possibility that Ohio State and many other (if not all) programs have to shelve the college football season.

You can watch the rest of the interview below thanks to it being posted by BTN.

Gene Smith (@OSU_AD) is an optimistic man. He wasn't so optimistic today.

He joins @BTNDaveRevsine to talk about his concern that there might not be a football season. pic.twitter.com/aUn7kt4QiK

— Ohio State on BTN (@OhioStateOnBTN) July 9, 2020

There’s still time to turn this thing around, but it’s clear at this point that the COVID-19 pandemic is headed in the wrong direction. And with health and well-being of student-athletes being the priority here, things are not looking good.

Let’s hope we can come together as a country and punch this ugly pandemic right in the teeth.