Oklahoma football: It’s getting late and Big 12 season remains an unknown
By Chip Rouse
Within the next couple of days we should know how the Big 12 plans to approach 2020 college football and the Oklahoma football season.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into everyone’s planning this year, and now it is college football’s turn to put its foot forward on how it plans to proceed with a 2020 season while managing the health and safety concerns presented by this difficult environment.
As I wrote the other day, there are only three viable options on the table, and a 12-game schedule, which conference officials have been pushing for all along is not one of them. With none of the other Power Five conferences coming out in favor of a full 12-game slate to include three or four nonconference games, such a consideration by the Big 12 is no longer feasible.
That leaves three doors to choose from:
- Play a conference-only schedule, which for the Big 12 would consist of a round robin of nine games.
- Play a plus-one schedule, which would entail nine conference opponents plus one game against an opponent outside of the Big 12.
- Defer the season to the spring of 2021.
Process of elimination tells us that postponing the season till the spring is only practical if that is mandated for all member schools by the NCAA. Interestingly, the NCAA Board of Governors is scheduled to meet this week. Exactly what is on the agenda is not clear, but one thing they could be discussing and deciding on is whether or not to cancel all fall sports for 2021. If that is the case, bullet point three above quickly takes the decision out of the Big 12’s hands.
Playing a conference-only nine-game schedule would leave the Big 12 at least a game short of what the other Power Five leagues have disclosed as their plans of action.
Big 12 should decide this week what the 2020 Oklahoma football schedule will look like.
It’s not that the Big 12 couldn’t get by playing a nine-game schedule, especially given that every team would have to play every other team in the conference. My guess is that Big 12 officials like the idea of having at least one nonconference opponent on the schedule and that is the side they will ultimately come down on.
The plus-one approach is not foolproof, though. That extra game would have to be against an FCS or mid-major opponent because the major conferences are not playing teams outside of their respective leagues.
Two other Power Five leagues — the Pac-12 and the SEC — have announced they will hold off getting the season underway until Sept. 26. Previously Oklahoma and Missouri State, a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, had agreed to move up their scheduled Sept. 5 season-opening game by one week, to Aug. 29.
There is a good chance the Big 12 will decide to move back the season start date to, say, Sept. 12, which is the date for the first scheduled conference game, with Baylor hosting Kansas. If that were to happen, OU would have to scrap or reschedule its game with Missouri State because the latter has a scheduling conflict on that date.
To this point, the Big 12 has done a good job of being patience and closely monitoring and learning from what others are doing in their planning and preparations to ensure the safest possible environment for the players and support staffs amid the continuing health concerns surrounding the coronavirus and future exposures.
“We do believe the longer you wait, the more information you have,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in an interview last week on ESPN Radio and cited in The Oklahoman.
“What was gold a month ago is garbage today, and I’d guess the same thing would be true a month from now,” the Big 12 commissioner said. “This is a voyage of discovery.”
Oklahoma has already begun fall training camp in preparation for a first game that is four weeks away but is likely to be pushed out further or even cancelled. Other Big 12 schools are preparing to start their organized preseason practice schedule shortly.
At some point, though, you have to take a stand and decide what it is you are going to do so that others in your circle of influence have clarity of direction for their planning purposes. For the Big 12 that time has come, even if it means planning and hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.