Pac-12 football has overcome two World Wars, one Great Depression, the Spanish Flu, California earthquakes and a slew of other epic societal events, but it couldn’t beat coronavirus.
The conference on Tuesday canceled the football season — and all sports competition — until at least Jan. 1, 2021, according to a source, succumbing to the pandemic after months of planning and hoping that its money maker could somehow be salvaged.
“There were enough questions were raised that we didn’t feel comfortable moving forward,” commissioner Larry Scott said during a webinar following the announcement.
The decision came a short time after Big Ten presidents voted to shut down for the fall.
The SEC, ACC and Big 12 are, at least for the moment, planning to move forward along the daunting road to the regular season.
Pac-12 presidents made the decision following a report from the conference’s medical advisory committee, which outlined the health risks COVID-19 poses to players, the worrisome community spread in several areas and the testing challenges that schools would face attempting to create a safe environment.
One of those health risks — perhaps the most fearsome — is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that has been found in several college athletes during the pandemic, according to ESPN.
“We became more concerned about that,” said Dr. Doug Aukerman, Oregon State’s sports medicine director and chair of the Pac-12’s medical advisory board.
Each Power Five conference has relied for advice on its own COVID-19 experts. The Pac-12’s team has 14 members and includes infectious disease and public health specialists that are not affiliated with the football teams or athletic departments.
“The No. 1 issue facing college football is getting all the Power Five set up with one medical advisory board,” a source said.
“If all the other leagues had the same medical information that we have, there’s not a president I know of that would look at what our (medical) staff provided and decide that it was OK to go forward.”
The Pac-12 has played football every year since the conference’s inception in 1916: Five teams participated during the 1918 pandemic, while four schools played in 1943-44 during World War II.
The conference will explore restarting the season in the winter or spring of 2021, multiple sources indicated, but that move is fraught with logistical obstacles — even if the coronavirus risks have been brought under control.
Two stand out as particularly daunting:
The physical demands that would come with playing two seasons in one calendar year; and the likelihood that many upperclassmen would skip a spring season in order to prepare for the NFL draft (scheduled for April), leaving rosters depleted.
Were the Pac-12 to play early next year, it would likely be an abbreviated season — eight or 10 games of conference-only competition.
“The spring would be hard,” a source said, “but we’ll take a look at it.”
The economic ramifications of canceling the 2020 season are momentous for the conference’s athletic departments, each of which generates in excess of $50 million annually — that’s well over 50 percent of their total revenue — from ticket sales, donations and media rights contracts tied to football.
The dark fall could result in massive budget cuts, possibly including layoffs and the elimination of Olympic sports teams, which are not profitable.
At least four schools, UCLA, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State, have accumulated tens of millions in debt in recent years.
However, the Pac-12 is considering an escape hatch:
A massive loan program would provide short-term relief for the schools while using the Pac-12’s future media rights contracts as collateral.
The decision to cancel the season comes two weeks after the conference released a revised, 10-game schedule and one week before teams were permitted to begin training camp.
The college football dominos began to topple last weekend, when the Mid-American Conference announced that it had canceled the fall football season.
Many in the college football industry expected the Pac-12 to mirror the Big Ten’s decision — whether the latter opted to cancel or pause — because of their close association in the Rose Bowl and the academic ethos that permeates each league.
Thirteen schools from the Big Ten are members of the prestigious Association of American Universities, while nine members of the Pac-12 are in the AAU.
(The ACC has five, the SEC four and the Big 12 three.)
“They have always moved in lockstep,” a source said of the Pac-12 and Big Ten.
But the Pac-12 presidents seemed poised to cancel the season regardless of the Big Ten’s position.
The motivation for shutting down, multiple sources said, was the information presented by the medical advisors.
“Looking at the facts — that’s something we’re deeply committed to,” said Oregon president Michael Schill, chair of the Pac-12 CEO Board.
Four issues dominated the report, according to a conference source:
— Viral spread.
Nine of the 11 local jurisdictions that are home to Pac-12 campuses are currently experiencing dangerous or uncontrolled levels of community spread.
— Health restrictions.
Many teams would be limited in what they could do if training camp started today — the Los Angeles schools, for instance, have been cleared by state but not county officials to allow the quarterbacks and receivers to play catch.
“To see photos of Clemson in helmets and out on the field,” said a source familiar with the varying county guidelines, “it shows how far away the Pac-12 is.”
That’s an immediate concern; there also is a longer-haul issue: contact tracing protocols.
“In some counties,” said source with knowledge of the medical team’s presentation, “local health officials would require the quarantining of the entire football team and operation with one positive case, because they all reach their threshold for close contact.”
— Myocarditis.
The condition is described by the Mayo Clinic as “an inflammation of the heart muscle (myocardium). Myocarditis can affect your heart muscle and your heart’s electrical system, reducing your heart’s ability to pump and causing rapid or abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias).”
In extreme cases, it can be life threatening, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Severe myocarditis weakens your heart so that the rest of your body doesn’t get enough blood. Clots can form in your heart, leading to a stroke or heart attack.”
What’s more, Pac-12 officials are aware of two recent German studies that revealed “heart involvement” in 78 out of 100 recovered Covid-19 patients “and active cardiac inflammation in 60.”
“There’s not enough data,” the source explained, alluding to the medical team’s report.
“Originally, it was believed cardiac complications were only developing in those who were symptomatic, but now we are learning that is not the case.”
The source said one doctor explained to conference officials that, “We think it best to pause and learn more while others (conferences) would rather keep going as we continue to study it.”
*** Testing.
The capacity, including turnaround time, simply isn’t has reached a threshold that would allow for safe competition.
“We aren’t the NFL,” the source said. “We don’t have a contract with a private lab.
“Right now, testing is a way to control the spread. It’s not an effective prevention strategy. With the quick turn-around testing, it can be that.”
Additionally, the source added: “We are using up the resources of the public and our university hospitals.”
(Update: The entire report can be found here.)
But why did the Pac-12 decide to cancel the season today, with competition not scheduled to begin for more than a month?
Because training camp, slotted for Monday, means physical contact.
And because the Pac-12’s medical advisory teams recommended against physical contact.
And the Pac-12 — regardless of how the result is received publicly — followed the guidance of its medical team.
“There’s a lot of ‘We could do this,’ but the reality on the ground is different,” a source said.
“Just because we understand in theory what can happen to make this work, it doesn’t matter if we can’t actually do those things.”
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