Report: Big 12 Moving Ahead with Playing Football this Fall

With two Power Five conferences out and two on playing football this falls, all eyes this evening were on the Big 12, the last major conference to announce a plan for the season.

The first domino to fall was the Big Ten, who announced this morning that they would not play football this fall, instead setting their sights on Spring 2021.  Soon after, the Pac 12 followed suit, announcing a similar plan to pause all athletics until Jan. 1.

All the while, the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference held on to hope that the 2020 season can proceed as planned.

”We will continue to further refine our policies and protocols for a safe return to sports as we monitor developments around COVID-19 in a continued effort to support, educate and care for our student-athletes every day,” SEC Greg Sankey said in a statement.

”We will continue to follow our process that has been in place for months and has served us well,” the ACC said in a statement. “We understand the need to stay flexible and be prepared to adjust as medical information and the landscape evolves.”

The last major conference to announce a position, the Big 12 boards of directors held a meeting this evening to decide the conference’s course of action. According to reports by Yahoo Sports and ESPN, the board decided to move ahead with fall football.

The Big 12 athletic directors are supposed to meet sometime this evening and a revised conference schedule is expected to be released soon.

Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades went on the radio earlier today and said he would not be comfortable making a decision on the season just yet.

“I’m in a place right now, just being completely honest and transparent, I am not comfortable making a decision today,” Rhoades told SicEm365 Radio. “If I was providing counsel, I would say ‘let’s pause.’ I’d want to have some additional conversation before we voted.”

Rhoades also said he felt that the Big 12 could effectively keep its players safe and that he would expect a very close vote if conference members were forced to make a decision today.