Sorry Fans–No Indiana University or Purdue Football in 2020–Big Ten Voted No
The wildest sports season ever just got wilder. The Big 10 conference announced on Tuesday the cancellation of their 2020 football season.
Evidently Michigan and Michigan State both of whom have medical doctors as presidents, led the charge to cancel. It is the university presidents that have the final say-so regarding the cancellations.
Sunday the Big 10 presidents voted 12 - 2 to cancel and made it official Tuesday. The only schools voting to play were Iowa and Nebraska. Big 10 Commissioner Kevin Warren said:
The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward. As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.
There is some talk about having the season in the Spring.
The Mid-American Conference had already announced the cancellation of their 2020 season. That's the conference with Ball State, Kent State, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, etc..
There's no word on the SEC yet but the conference earlier announced all 10 games would be within the conference. The two extra Kentucky Wildcats games would be Ole Miss at Kentucky and the Wildcats at Alabama.
A couple of other conferences, the ACC and Pac 12 will most likely fall next. Is the entire college football 2020 season in jeopardy? Everything else is turned upside down this year so..probably. We will know by the end of this week what everyone's plans are.
There are 130 schools in the FBS, (the Football Bowl Subdivision of college football) and at the time of this writing 89 of those schools are still planning on playing this fall.
Stay tuned.