Larry Scott believes a spring football season is "last resort"

In an interview on Pac-12 radio, the Pac-12 commissioner was asked about a spring season and described the many complications that come with it.

Conferences and college sports stakeholders were blindsided in March with the coronavirus causing massive hysteria across the country and the subsequent canceling of sports in the United States.

They don’t want to be put in that situation again and practically every day they discuss different scenarios of what could happen this fall.

They’re preparing for a delay, they’re preparing for a pause and they’re preparing for a normal season. All options are on the table.

“Our first preference and priority is to play the full season and to start on time. And that’s been our default,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said in an interview with Sean O’Connell and Geoff Schwartz on Pac-12 radio. “I’d say every other scenario is a fallback out of necessity if we can’t start on time or it might start and the season gets interrupted. We feel a responsibility to be ready, have done the legwork, the research so we can pivot because we might have to make these decisions without a lot of notice. Like we saw happen in the fall, it all happened pretty quickly.”

Scott made it very clear that the hope is to have a regular season on-time but knows that it’s likely they are going to need a contingency plan.

“We are not moving away from a full season starting on time unless and until we feel we have to,” Scott said during the interview.

He was asked if there is a pecking order of priority of what the fallback plans are and Scott wants to have a season in the fall, even if it means going to a different schedule.

“I would say, at least for me, there isn’t a national consensus on this, would be keeping football in the fall,” Scott told O’Connell and Schwartz. “Even if it’s got to be on some delayed basis, abbreviated basis, conference-only basis.:

Although there have been lots of rumors swirling about the college football season moving to the spring, especially over the last week, Scott said that would be so complicated that it would have to be the last resort.

“So far our examination of the spring, which is of course the latest you could go and still play a season, it’s very complicated to think about a whole different season to play football in,” Scott said. “Between the weather, impact on the NFL Draft and combine, let alone what’s going to happen with the virus then and the conflict of TV windows and other sports, I’d say the spring has the most complications and is probably the last resort if you can’t play the traditional football season.”

A football season seems very likely. When? Well, that could be anyone’s guess.