Scott said that statements from Newsom and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown cleared the way for "no state restrictions on our ability to play sports in light of our adherence to strict health and safety protocols and stringent testing," and he said Pac-12 schools in California and Oregon would now reach out to relevant county health officials "to seek clarification on what is required to achieve the same clearance to resume contact practice and competition."
Scott had consistently said previously that the Pac-12 couldn't move forward with any vote for a football season startup plan as long as half of its schools -- the four in California and two in Oregon -- weren't cleared for full practice.
Then later in the evening Bay Area News Group's Jon Wilner reported that USC athletic director Mike Bohn and UCLA AD Martin Jarmond held a joint Zoom call with Los Angeles County health officials, and that the Trojans and Bruins are preparing to start full-squad practices once Pac-12 presidents approve that step, which could come as soon as Friday.
State authorities were viewed as one hurdle and the aforementioned county authorities the other.
So considering where things stood Tuesday, with players feeling they had to make themselves heard to create any momentum for a Pac-12 football season this fall, remarkable progress was made Wednesday.
There's no known timeline for when a response might come from the county level.
"We are eager for our student-athletes to have the opportunity to play this season, as soon as it can be done safely and in accordance with public health officials," Scott said in his statement. "
It was a wild day Wednesday, starting with Newsom calling it a "misrepresentation of the facts" that the state was preventing the Pac-12 from playing football.
"They can resume football. There's nothing in the guidelines that say the Pac-12 cannot move forward -- period, full stop. I just want to make that crystal clear," he said.
Yet, the very state guidelines he referenced dictated that in-state college teams could only practice in cohorts of up to 12 players and that the group couldn't mix with other groups, which makes a traditional football practice impossible.
Further compounding the confusion of the day, Wilner then talked to a California health department official about what college teams could or couldn't do in practice and came away with untenable answers like practice against air or have 5-on-5 practices.
Needless to say, both the USC players' open letter and the questions asked at his news conference seemed to achieve their desired goal of commanding Newsom's attention, as Wilner reported that he then reached out to USC officials later in the day.
And hours that news conference the Pac-12 put out its announcement that the states of California and Oregon were no longer an obstacle to preparing for a football season. Does that mean that the guideline of 12-man cohorts had already been changed? Like so much in this process, the details were not explicit or clear, but the implication was that, yes, those previous barriers to holding football practices had been handled.
For what it's worth, Scott has previously discussed needing a six-week ramp-up to the start of a season, but last week USC coach Clay Helton said he thought his team would need at least four weeks to be ready.
"[The NCAA] gave us 12 hours a week to be able to work with the kids -- 7 hours of strength and conditioning, meetings, but 5 hours of skill development and being able to use football equipment, be able to use the ball, be able to use the bag, be able to get functional football movement," he said. "Now, at some point in time when you declare, OK, this is the start of the season, you do have to work backward and you've got to have a minimum I think of four weeks of training camp to be able to, one, implement scheme, but more importantly to practice the game and get their bodies in functional football shape."
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