Big 12 Releases 2020 Football Schedule, Games to Start as Soon as Sept. 12
The Big 12 conference kept the hopes of a college football season alive on Tuesday night with its decision to move forward with fall sports, and now, on Wednesday morning, the league has released its football schedule.
As announced previously, the league has shifted to a nine-conference game, plus one non-conference game model for the 2020 campaign.
Non-conference games can begin as early as Sept. 12 for member institutions, but conference play will start on Sept. 26, similarly to the SEC. The Dr. Pepper Big 12 Championship Game is scheduled for Dec. 12, but can be moved to Dec. 19.
Each school will have two bye weeks factored into each schedule.
The league's most notable game, the Red River Shootout with Texas and Oklahoma, will take place on Oct. 10 in Dallas.
“The virus continues to evolve and medical professionals are learning more with each passing week,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a press release. “Opinions vary regarding the best path forward, as we’ve seen throughout higher education and our society overall, but we are comfortable in our institutions’ ability to provide a structured training environment, rigorous testing and surveillance, hospital quality sanitation and mitigation practices that optimize the health and safety of our student-athletes. We believe all of this combines to create an ideal learning and training situation during this time of COVID-19. Ultimately, our student-athletes have indicated their desire to compete in the sports they love this season and it is up to all of us to deliver a safe, medically sound, and structured academic and athletic environment for accomplishing that outcome.”
At 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Bowlsby hosted a press conference to discuss the Big 12's decision.
Most notably, Bowlsby revealed that there will be a call between the conference commissioners and the College Football Playoff next week to discuss options for this season.
“We have a College Football Playoff call next week to talk about this," Bowlsby said. "It will be a while into season before all of this is resolved. No obvious reason why it couldn’t work.”
