Pac-12 considering multiple options, including moving football to spring

By Michael David Smith

Football could be a spring sport in the Pac-12 in the coming school year.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott says he’s still hopeful that football season can start as usual, but that recent rises in positive tests might make that impossible.

“I was cautiously optimistic . . . but the last couple weeks have changed everyone’s outlook because of the extent to which restarting the economy and loosening restrictions has led to significant outbreaks,” Scott told the San Jose Mercury News. “I still want to be cautiously optimistic, but if there’s no change in society’s response and behavior, which results in a quick flattening of the curve and a decrease in the spread of the virus, that would lead to a much more pessimistic view about our campuses being able to open and our ability to play college sports.”

Scott said he speaks regularly with the commissioners of the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and ACC and that the Power Five college football conferences are hoping they can come up with one unified plan.

That plan could mean playing the season as scheduled, but it could also mean a delayed start, schedules that only include conference games, some schools playing their seasons but other schools canceling, or moving the whole college football season to the spring.

Basically, no one knows what’s going to happen. But the powers that be in college football want to be prepared for any possibility.