Column: Doomsday is approaching and it's because the leaders couldn't get ahead of it
Welcome to college football Saturday.
The dominoes have begun to fall, especially over the last week with the cancellation of FCS and Division II football in the fall.
But the biggest domino so far was announced on Saturday morning. The Mid-American Conference has canceled the fall football season.
The MAC becomes the first FBS conference to move away from the fall. UConn was the first FBS school to cancel their season.
“There are simply too many unknowns to put our student-athletes in these situations,” MAC commissioner John Steinbrecher said. “This is simply a miserable decision. I am heartbroken we are in this place.”
Now, it appears, the Big Ten presidents are meeting on Saturday to discuss possibly canceling the season.
It feels like deja vu from March.
Back in March, Ivy League was first to cancel its basketball tournament (now same with fall sports) and many other conferences start to follow suit a week later.
Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger is reporting that the Pac-12 presidents have a scheduled meeting on Tuesday, and it won't be a surprise if that's the day they come out with a decision.
The Pac-12 football teams can start fall camp on Aug. 17 as of now. And the season is scheduled to start on Sept. 26.
Those dates will likely be changed by Tuesday.
"What happened? The closer we got to kickoff, the more misgivings have mounted," Dellenger wrote in a column on Saturday. "There was never a unified belief at the FBS level about how to proceed, and those fissures have become more clear as time went by and the data did not alleviate concerns."
If the season is postponed or canceled, it will be because they listened to the players. It's clear the players do not feel safe under the current protocols.
That's why they formed #WeAreUnited and other similar groups across the country. And that's why, on a recent conference call with Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, the players asked for more testing.
And Scott basically told them to kick rocks.
They have not been able to test the players as much as they should have or should be testing in the future.
They weren't prepared to have outbreaks before college students even return to campus.
They weren't prepared to have college students speak their minds when the leaders aren't doing things to make them safe.
And it looks like there won't be a fall football season because of it.
