A JERSEY GUY: CFB's Main Problem: Lack of Patience

If everyone had waited, lots of the early season angst could have been avoided.

As we watch the daily soap opera known in the Big Ten as "When Will They Make Up Their Mind”, one salient factor becomes clearer each day.

If EVERYONE at the Power 5 level in college football had followed the lead of the Southeastern Conference and simply postponed the START of the 2020 college football season, we would be looking at a different landscape.

If, for example, the other CFB commissioners had followed the lead of Greg Sankey and the SEC, we would have avoided the early postponements of games that had to be rescheduled because of COVID-19 issues.

We would have avoided most, if not all, of the controversy in the Big Ten, if Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren had simply said a month ago that the conference was going to push back the start of its season for three weeks AND then ASSESS the conditions once all the students were back on campus.

The Pac-12, which has many of its schools on the quarter system, with classes not starting until late September or even early October, could have followed the same path.

This is not hindsight.

 It WAS suggested, but the only one that followed through on it was the SEC.

Imagine what a wonderful college football world it would have been.

NO lawsuits coming out of Nebraska, nor protests coming from Ohio State and Michigan, no embarrassment for Warren and the Big Ten Presidents, no family feuds becoming public.

What they would also have found by waiting was quicker and more efficient ways of testing, a much better awareness of the problems they would face with students on campus—and how to handle them.

They would have had two months of major league baseball, NHL and NBA playoffs and a few weeks of the NFL regular season to also examine.

This does not suggest that a late start will guarantee a trouble-free regular season.

It does not mean that there will not be postponements and cancellations in the next several weeks.

There might even be so many spikes around the country that the world of college football will still have to shut down.

But there is also likely to be cheap, affordable DAILY testing available for the schools to deal with whatever issues they will face.

Now the Big Ten is looking for a face-saving way of changing its direction, most likely using the "major breakthroughs in testing and medical evidence'' excuse.

I hope that works and that the Big Ten and, eventually the Pac 12, can make a fall run at football. 

It will be good for the sport, good for the mental well-being of fans who are being asked to accept massive changes.

But maybe it won't and the second guessing and chaos will  continue.

That would be even more depressing, since almost ALL of it could have been avoided simply by waiting as long as possible before making a final call.

The Big Ten and Kevin Warren and the Pac-12 didn't do that. 

And that will be part of their legacy, as well, in a season which can't end soon enough as equally as it couldn't start soon enough.