The first domino in what could be the sequence of events that leads to the cancellation of the fall college football season fell on Tuesday as the Big Ten conference announced that it would postpone all fall sports.
This means that football in the Big Ten conference will not take place, meaning that some of the country’s biggest programs like Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State will not play in Fall 2020.
The Big Ten, one of the “Power Five” conferences in college football along with the Big 12, the Pac-12, the SEC, and the ACC, became the first of this powerful group of conferences to announce that football would not take place this fall.
While other conferences have expressed mixed feelings about possibly playing this fall in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the United States particularly hard, the Big Ten became the first conference to make a decision one way or the other.
Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren stated, “It became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.”
Now, it appears that other conferences may be pressured into taking the same step to protect student-athletes’ safety and postponing the 2020 football season until the situation is safer.
