Due to the Pandemic, The Pac- 12 Will Only Play In-Conference Games For the 2020 Season
The PAC-12 conference will only be playing in-conference games this season, per SiriusXM host Sean O’Connell. The move comes just hours after the Big Ten conference announced it will be doing the same.
A large cloud of doubt has been cast over the possibility of a college football season thanks to COVID-19, with a number of minor events taking place through the course of the summer. While teams must figure out if there will be a season, schools across the country still are deciding on the potential absence of students on campus. Multiple schools (most recently Ohio State) stopped voluntary workouts after discovering a positive test, and the Ivy League just announced no fall sports (including football) will take place in 2020.
For Arizona State, this means the loss of their first three games to the season, with two of those contests being at home. ASU was originally scheduled to host NAU as their home opener, with another home battle with BYU following a trip to Las Vegas to play UNLV. This will bring Arizona State’s total number of games down to nine for the 2020 season, excluding a potential PAC-12 conference championship game.
With the new scheduling alterations, ASU will now kick off their season on the road at USC. While it’s yet to be seen if the dates will change for the conference games, September 26 now becomes marks the first day of Sun Devil football.
While the PAC-12 and Big Ten are the only conferences to announce the new scheduling model, it’s assumed the other Power 5 conferences (Big 12, ACC, SEC) will follow suit in hopes of still kicking off this fall.