Each morning I wake up and wonder where the saga of a lost season for Ohio State and Big Ten football stands. And each day, without fail, there seems to be a new development. First, there was Ryan Day and Scott Frost both vowing to fight still for their teams. That was followed by some letters to Kevin Warren and the Big Ten penned by football parents at Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State, Nebraska, and Michigan.
That was followed up by an online petition to overturn the Big Ten’s decision to postpone the fall football season organized by Justin Fields. The former Heisman finalist and Big Ten Player of the Year also appeared on ESPN radio to help push the efforts. And … not to lose site of it, OSU DB Shaun Wade’s father, Randy, is organizing a peaceful protest outside of the Big Ten offices in Chicago for Friday morning (time to take a PTO day Warren).
But it’s not done. Now we have a very reputable source reporting that Ohio State is still working behind the scenes to get five other teams to join it in a Big Ten only fall season. Jeff Snook, an Ohio State graduate and an author of several college football books, has been using his sources behind the scenes to confirm that, despite what’s been stated publicly, that there is indeed some wheeling and dealing still going on outside of the public’s eye.
He detailed it all as a Facebook post on his personal profile Tuesday night.
The gist of it is that Ohio State, Nebraska, Penn State, and Iowa are all on board to play a schedule amongst themselves, but that they need two more teams to join in to get half of the league on board. There are efforts to get Wisconsin and Michigan on board who apparently have differing opinions between the presidents and football administrators.
The season would kick off somewhere around September 26, and would not culminate with a Big Ten Championship Game.
Obviously, if this is all true, time is of the essence here since preparations also have to be put in place to get a so-called spring season off the ground, so if things don’t materialize in the next couple of weeks, this could go quietly into the night.
Either way, there appear to be some legs still to getting teams in the Big Ten to play a competitive schedule in the fall. So, is there still hope? I think it’s still a tall order, but it’s just one more log on the fire of this rolling inferno of push back and support to have the Big Ten reverse course on its decision to shelve the fall season.
You can read the complete transcript of Snook on the next page.