Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott joined The Dan Patrick Show on Friday morning to discuss the progress the conference has made this week toward a potential fall football season and where things stand at this point.
Scott said he did not anticipate there would be a formal vote by the Pac-12's presidents/CEOs on Friday regarding a football restart, but when asked if he expected the conference to have a decision by Monday he acknowledged, "I think we have to decide by next week if we're moving forward."
The Pac-12 later released a statement Friday evening that its CEO group would reconvene next Thursday, so it looks like a formal decision is further off than initially expected.
Facing a sudden dilemma this week as the Big Ten announced it would reverse course and join the other three Power 5 conferences in playing a fall football season, the Pac-12 put the pieces in place for it to do the same.
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It started with an open letter by USC players to California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday -- with other Pac-12 players joining in the "We want to play" chorus -- and Newsom then being questioned during his news conference Wednesday about the state limitations placed on college athletics teams in California, which along with similar restrictions in Oregon, had been a barrier to half of the Pac-12's schools being able to prepare for any potential season.
Subsequent dialogue between Newsom, USC and the Pac-12 and a similar adjustment from the state of Oregon led to a path forward for the conference, and USC athletic director Mike Bohn and UCLA AD Martin Jarmond then cut through the red tape with LA County to lift restrictions on that end as well Wednesday night. Cal and Stanford are reportedly still awaiting similar clearances from their respective county authorities, per the Bay Area News Group's Jon Wilner.
All that would remain then is a formal vote from the conference's CEOs to decide whether or not to get a fall football season back on track, but certainly all those efforts this week were for that purpose. The delay in a vote would seem at least partly connected to the remaining clearances needed in Northern California.
"We've had a lot of progress over the last day or two, especially with public health officials in California and Oregon, and this on the heels of the deal we did with Quidel, which gives us access to daily testing with rapid results, has brought us a long way. So our medical advisory committee is much more comfortable with us going forward, and it looks like the hurdles have been cleared in terms of the public health authorities in the states of California and Oregon so things are looking a lot more promising," Scott said on the show Friday morning. "I've got a call today with our presidents and chancellors. We're going to take stock of where we are and see if we're comfortable with a path forward before January 1, which was what our previous decision was. We'll see if we can align with others in college football still this fall.
"I'm not expecting a vote today. I'm not going to push for one today. I mean, this has been a rapidly developing series of events. [Wednesday] was pretty crazy from a call I got from Gov. Newsom in the morning to meetings folks from Oregon and Oregon State had with their governor that day. So we need to give the folks who lead our campuses a chance to digest all this and take into account everything going on on their campuses. But we also realize that if we're going to move forward this fall with football where we need a six-week ramp-up for our student-athletes ... we've got to figure out with both [football and basketball] are we comfortable moving forward."
While Scott continues to reference the six-week ramp-up, USC football coach Clay Helton said last week his team would need a minimum of four weeks to be ready for a season. The Trojans have been working out in some capacity since the first wave of players were allowed to return to campus for voluntary workouts in mid-June. More recently, the coaching staff has been allowed 12 hours a week with the players for strength training, speed work, individual drills, meetings, etc.
The Big Ten is set to launch an eight-game season on Oct. 24 with a conference championship game and concurrent consolation games for the other teams on Dec. 19 -- the final weekend before the College Football Playoff committee sets the ultimate rankings and decides the four playoff teams.
So the Pac-12 would need to end by that same date, as CFP executive director Bill Hancock indicated there has been no discussion to move that date back.
The Pac-12 schools have not received their Quidel rapid-response antigen testing machines yet -- Scott said those are expected to be shipped on Monday -- and it's expected the conference will need to get familiar with the equipment before launching padded practices. So there seems no likely path to matching the Big Ten's Oct. 24 start date, but Scott was asked if Oct. 31 -- which has been reported as a possibility -- would be likely.
"So if we're going to move forward it depends on how quickly we can get back to practice. Six weeks would be from Monday, but we're only getting these rapid tests next week, so I think that would be the most ambitious -- maybe a week or two too quick for us, but somewhere in that zip code is where we'd be playing if we're playing," he said.
Patrick pressed him multiple times for a more definitive statement that the Pac-12 will be playing football this fall.
"I'd say at this stage it's promising. It's amazing how much has happened the last five weeks since we've made our decision [to cancel the season until at least Jan. 1], and the good news is we got access to the kind of testing our medical folks required sooner than we thought. We've gotten public health authority approval quickly, earlier than we thought, so we've tried to do a couple of things," Scott said. "We've tried to be transparent about what we're doing, deliberate -- health and safety first -- but at the same time our student-athletes want to play and our coaches want to play, our fans want to play, so we've been committed to explore every possibility to do so when we felt it was safe and we had appropriate approval.
"We're trying to be nimble and flexible too, and our presidents and chancellors have been that too and that's why they're convening on a call in real time to address this new information. If we can provide an opportunity for our student-athletes to play as soon as it's safe, they want to play and we owe them that if we can do that."
Patrick pressed Scott as to whether it will be his recommendation to play this fall.
"They're going to hear my recommendation first," Scott said. "We've overcome the major obstacles that we had and the criteria that our medical advisors set with the public health authority approvals, but our presidents and chancellors have to weigh the issues on their campuses. They'll be the ultimate decision-makers, but in terms of the metrics and the issues we talked about in mid August, the reasons why we weren't going forward, we've made tremendous progress and overcome those things. I'll report to them that we have achieved those things, and it's up to them to weigh it all and decide."
Scott also addressed whether he thought the Pac-12 would be at a steep disadvantage with the CFP selection committee if it is playing less games than the other conferences, with the SEC, Big 12 and ACC all aiming to play at least 10 regular-season games and the Big Ten set to play eight.
"If we were to play this fall, I don't think anyone can predict. I was on the call with my fellow commissioners, and we've got a board of the College Football Playoff, I don't think if you ask any of my fellow commissioners they can tell you how many games they're going to play. They know what they're going to try to play, but we've already seen in the first two weeks every league that's tried to play has had to postpone games," Scott said. "So no one is feeling supremely confident at this point, especially those that don't have daily tests, that all their teams are going to play every game. So it's uncharted territory. We don't know how many games each league is going to play. There's going to be many more differences than we're normally used to, and I don't know whether the average is going to be six games or eight games. I don't think anyone can tell you. We don't know what player availability is going to be, and the committee is going to have their work cut out -- there's going to be a lot more subjectivity this year. I would not rule anything out."
