9/18/2020 football Edit

The 3-2-1: The Pac-12 Is On The Clock

Brenden Slaughter • BeaversEdge

Publisher

With the Pac-12 Conference looking to restart its football season as soon as late-October, BeaversEdge.com dives into the narrative in this edition of the 3-2-1.

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MORE: THE EDGE Podcast: Talkin with Henry Buckles | Following Big10 Announcement, All Eyes on Pac-12

Three Things We Learned

1. The Pac-12 is forging ahead:

-> After weeks of silence, the Pac-12 finally broke its seal in the wake of the BIG10 announcement. With the BIG10 Conference officially moving ahead with a late-October restart, the Pac-12 and commissioner Larry Scott have been hard at work behind the scenes trying to get their own restart underway.

Logistically, there's a lot of issues that need to be addressed throughout the conference before anything can be started, but it's important to note that there's finally some momentum on the west coast.

Unlike the BIG10, which had coaches, players, and families ready to initiate anarchy against the conference in order to get football back, the Pac-12 stayed quiet and behind the scenes. Because of that difference in approach, the Pac-12 has a lot of work ahead of them.

2. October 31st in the target date:

-> The most ambitious of start dates, multiple sources are reporting that the Pac-12 is roughly targeting a Halloween start for the Pac-12 football season. While that's a great baseline to aim for, the likelihood of actually having games going then isn't super high.

Multiple coaches across the conference have been pleading for a 5-6 week lead time to get their respective teams ready, and given where we are now, it's hard to imagine being able to get that window in before Halloween.

The Quidel rapid-testing machines are supposed to arrive at the 12 member schools by the end of the month, and once that happens and the proper training goes along with it, that's when we'll start to see things move much faster. Once the daily and immediate testing is at the disposal of this conference, there won't be anything holding them back from returning to the field.

3. The conference is much-further behind the BIG10

-> Let me make one thing abundantly clear. The BIG10 and Pac-12 are in completely different hemispheres as it relates to getting back to the field.

Whereas the Pac-12 shut everything down, and in some cases sent their student-athletes home after the decision to postpone, the BIG10 never really stopped. Sure, the contact practices were still a no-no, but they stayed together as a team, worked out, and were able to conduct individual works.

The Pac-12 on the other hand hasn't been waiting in the wings for restart news like the BIG10 and thus is further behind to get their season underway. Simply put, the Pac-12 wasn't expecting to play before Jan. 1st, whereas the BIG10 was wanting to restart the season from the moment it was postponed.

Two Questions

1. How quickly will the Pac-12 be able to get things in motion?

-> Despite all the positives that have emerged this week in the wake of the BIG10 coming back to the fold, there's still a lot to be determined and agreed upon by the Pac-12.

While it was a huge coup for the conference to get the go-ahead from Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and California Gov. Gavin Newsom to practice fully amid COVID-19, the Pac-12 CEO Group still holds all the cards.

The group, which is made up of the 12 chancellors and presidents of the conferences' universities, are scheduled to meet on Friday, September 18th, but according to various reports, an official vote isn't yet expected at this meeting.

Given that the Pac-12 now has local health authorities on their side and a rapid-testing partnership with Quidel, there's really not a reason why the CEO group would delay the return of the season.

With that being said, time is of the essence... every day the Pac-12 isn't getting restarted is another day that the other power-five conferences leave them behind.

2. Will the schools get enough prep time?

-> One of the biggest hurdles yet to be addressed is how will the players bodies handle this start-stop scenario. Unlike the BIG10, which basically kept its offseason program in place in case football was started back up again, the Pac-12 is in a much different boat.

Whether it was not being able to practice due to local health officials, or simply not doing so because there was no clear guidance on the future, the Pac-12 is behind the eight-ball in getting their student-athletes back into game shape.

If the Pac-12 doesn't give their schools the proper amount of time (coaches are saying anywhere between 4-6 weeks) to get their players ready, the risk of serious injury rises exponentially and that's not something the conference can afford.

Everyone wants to have Pac-12 football back in the fold, but it's important to remember that there's a lot of hurdles that have yet to be cleared, most notably, the physical health and readiness of the student-athletes.

One Prediction

Oregon State will begin its football season in early to mid-November

-> While I believe there's a lot of good in the conference openly saying October 31st would be the ideal start date, November seems far more realistic to me. That's not to say that the 31st couldn't happen, but based on what we're hearing around the conference, it seems like a longshot.

There's no doubt that everything has been sped up over the last 48 hours in the wake of the announcements regarding college football across the country, but asking the Pac-12 to have its players ready to go by Halloween seems ambitious.

The Beavers will have a fall football season this year, I just expect it to start in either the first or second week of November.