It has been a turbulent few months in college football with a lot of on and off again news around what may and may not take place – initially a lot of cancellations were rolled out through fears of player safety, but recent promises of rapid testing have caused a big swing as many of the big college leagues are set to get underway again, alongside similar news that the Big Ten would also be returning just a few weeks after announcing that there would be no fall play.
University of Oregon’s president Michael Schill, the PAC-12 chair stated “One thing that didn’t change was our commitment to the health and safety of our students. That has always been paramount. It is absolutely a value of the PAC-12. What ended up happening, was over time our medical advisory group became much more comfortable with our plans to resume.” Although a stark warning followed – if cases did rise once again then there would be no hesitation to shut the season down once again.
(Image from oregonlive.com)
Although a full schedule has yet to be announced, it’s expected the season will kick off again on November 6th – 7th, each team will play the other teams in their division and one crossover game. The seventh game will be played later in December, perhaps the 18th or 19th, as part of a championship weekend.
It was very recent that the announcement was made for the cancellation too with the first coming on August 11th, so there has been a quick turnaround and a large part of this is in result to testing – it was announced that President Donald Trump had helped to secure rapid testing for the Big Ten, and so there may be some collaboration with college sports to get things going again. This was reverberated by Dr. Doug Aukerman of Oregon State, who stated “Our goal is not to have a bunch of student-athletes get infected with COVID. That is why the testing is really important.” Given there have been other concerns in bigger events, particularly within the MLB as there had been a huge spread of the virus very early on, a lot of attention and monitoring will be paid so that any potential outbreak can be stopped as early as possible and to not hinder any chances the renewed season has of finishing.
The return of college sporting events is great news for punters however as it seemed as if most wouldn’t see any return until 2021 – fans can look to bet on the PAC-12 through popular sites such as bet-colorado.com and once the full schedules for games and draws are announced, many will have a better of idea for what to expect from these games. With college basketball set to return a little later with November 25th being outlined as a potential date, there’s certainly a lot of college sport coming back all at once, the big hope is that there is enough care and monitoring to ensure further cancellations don’t happen.
