Oklahoma football: Is Big 12 headed toward spring football decision?

NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 9: The Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, home of the Oklahoma Sooners, is ready for a game against the Iowa State Cyclones on November 9, 2019 at in Norman, Oklahoma. OU held on to win 42-41. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)
NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 9: The Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, home of the Oklahoma Sooners, is ready for a game against the Iowa State Cyclones on November 9, 2019 at in Norman, Oklahoma. OU held on to win 42-41. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

While Oklahoma football gears up for what it remains hopeful will be some semblance of a fall season, there now is a new trigger for deferring 2020 college football until the spring of ’21.

On Saturday, the Mid-American Conference (MAC) decided to postpone all fall sports programs, including football, until the spring of 2021 because of ongoing concerns about COVID-19 exposure. By doing so, the MAC becomes the first FBS conference to defer the football season to the spring. Now the elephant in the room is: Will the Power Five conferences follow?

The MAC decision follows a decision earlier in the week by UConn, which became the first Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team to opt out of playing football this fall.

Nine of 13 conferences in the Football Championship Subdivision, the level below the FBS, have already elected to postpone the 2020 fall football season.

The decision by the MAC does not mean that the Power Five leagues will change course and jump on the spring band wagon.

It’s barely been a week since the Big 12 announced its plans to play a nine-plus-one schedule this fall. So far, all five major conferences have given every indication they are making every effort to complete a fall football season, including holding conference championships and a College Football Playoff to determine a national champion.

But as we all know in the “new normal” world of COVID-19 that has drastically changed our daily lives the past five-plus months, there are many moving parts and everything is subject to change.

Back in May, when Oklahoma was making preparations and planning for how it was going to handle the return of the players to campus for voluntary workouts and decided to not to bring back the players until July 1 at the earliest, head coach Lincoln Riley made the comment that all options for the season needed to be on the table, including moving the season to the spring.

Perhaps not the most ideal solution, he said, but it certainly is doable and shouldn’t be ruled out.

With the scheduled start to the season is now less than a month away and COVID cases continuing to spike in many areas of the country, players in the Pac-12 and Big Ten are expressing serious concerns about the plans that are in place to protect their health and safety in the midst of the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Even though the Power Five conferences have not backed down from their plans to preserve a season in the fall and are moving forward with modified schedules, there are still many critics who question the judgement and practicality of allowing fall football in any form.

According to an ESPN report by college football writers Adam Rittenberg and Heather Dinich. the Big Ten presidents were scheduled to meet this weekend and the Pac-12 CEO group early next week. You can bet the MAC decision will come up for discussion, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see one or both of those conference pump the brakes a bit on the start to the season.

The very nature of football makes it perhaps the most difficult sport to protect the players against COVID exposure. For one thing, the roster sizes are double and even triple any other sport, and having to go outside of your self-contained bubble to play other teams or even hosting teams who come into your protective environment, is in itself highly problematic. Just look at what is happening in Major League Baseball’s return.

Stay tuned because there is going to be plenty of college football news coming in the next couple of weeks. Wiser heads need to prevail in this closely followed discussion and debate that is rapidly approaching a drop dead decision date.

What no one wants to happen is to get the season underway and then have to plead mea culpa and pull the plug a couple of games in.