The Big Ten screwed up, so why should the SEC pay for it?

The Big Ten — and Pac-12, but I repeat myself – has had a horribly inconsistent response to COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.

First, they unilaterally announced that they were going to an all-conference schedule. That was back in July, and I wrote then that half-measures weren’t going to cut it when it came to playing and the virus. You were either in or out.

But limiting things to in-conference games did force the hands of the Big Ten’s partners. The SEC, ACC and Big-12 each made slightly different decisions, but the effect was that they are all essentially playing within their conferences.

Then came early August when the Big Ten (and again, sort-of, the Pac-12) tried to pressure the other three big conferences to fold things up in a way that clearly blindsided those conferences. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the leadership of the other conferences decided to wait, and did so without speaking ill of the Big Ten or Pac-12 at the time.

Those three did decide to take slightly different courses. The ACC and Big-12 kicked off in early September and had some cancellations – including one with now 9-0 Notre Dame against Wake Forest – early on. That game against Wake has been rescheduled for December 12.

Sankey decided to move the SEC start back to late September. That was part of his logic in going conference-only. It did mean only ten games (instead of the 11 scheduled in the ACC). But that also allowed a bye week and a week at the end of the year to allow for rescheduling around conflicts. Again, the SEC has not been without its COVID cancellations, but it looks like those extra weeks will end up essential to being able to schedule around the disruptions.

What that means is that the contenders for the playoffs in the ACC and the SEC will have most likely played their full schedules.

In contrast, the Big Ten decided to take half-measures and come back for the 2020 season for a few different reasons.

First, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren looked completely impotent as Nebraska parents took his conference to court seeking insight into the vote associated with cancelling the season. It didn’t help that the optics were terrible when Warren’s own son was going to play for Mississippi State while his Dad’s conference was completely shut down.

Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis just eviscerated Warren and  the Big Ten day-after-day on his radio show. Travis has famously been very bullish on playing and getting back to normal life in the face of the pandemic, but regardless of what you think of Travis, he absolutely turned up the heat on Warren.

And Travis was eventually able to get President Trump involved. Trump went so far as to take credit for bringing back Big Ten football on the debate state. Again, whether you believe that claim or not doesn’t matter. The fact is that the heat again rose and there was nowhere for Warren to turn.

His players wanted to play, he looked like a hypocrite for having his son playing while his players could not, and the Big Ten clearly didn’t want to go through discovery in that lawsuit (I’m actually disappointed we don’t get to see those meeting notes).

So the Big Ten reversed course, followed shortly by – you guessed it – the Pac-12.

They brought out doctors to talk about their safety protocols and how they were doing things much more stringently than the other conferences (which is true). But the science hadn’t really changed between the time they made the decision to cancel and the time they decided to come back.

It just wasn’t a winning proposition anymore, either from a PR – or perhaps more importantly, legal – perspective.

So they announced they were coming back to much consternation from the Big Ten elite media. Christine Brennan, in particular, wrote that “Then came the darkest day in Big Ten sports history, the day the vaunted conference caved. It choked. It got scared. It became the SEC.”

Except it didn’t become the SEC. The SEC actually showed true leadership.

Because the SEC had actually been planning the entire time to play the season, it had the ability to change course with outbreaks. Because the Big Ten had not, it didn’t have enough time for players to properly prepare for the season and build-in the off-weeks in case of COVID cases popping up. Combine that with the more stringent guidelines imposed by the conference, and this outcome was inevitable.

The first sign of trouble was when Wisconsin won its first game convincingly and then immediately had to cancel games against Nebraska and Purdue. And now we have Ohio State having to cancel its game against Illinois because of an outbreak after having a game canceled against Maryland a couple of weeks ago due to an outbreak with the Terps.

These are the exact same things that happened in the Big-12, ACC and SEC. Those conferences just actually planned for it.

This only matters because the Buckeyes are ranked fourth in the College Football Playoff rankings. I already had some doubts about how good Ohio State is because the best team they’ll play is a home game against Indiana. But even if you set that aside, it is possible that the game against Michigan State will get canceled next week. That would mean that Ohio State may not even be eligible for its own conference championship game.

Even if everything goes right from here on out, the Buckeyes will play seven games maximum, including the conference championship. Florida will have likely played 11.

You go to college to (presumably) learn lessons about life. One of those lessons is that leadership matters, and that good planning and preparation lead to much better solutions. You also (hopefully) learn that you get further in life if you work with your strategic partners rather than trying to bully them to get what you want. And you also (again, hopefully) learn that life is not fair.

Well, Ohio State – and the Big Ten – need to learn all of those lessons from this fiasco.

The Big Ten tried to bully its partners into the solution it wanted. It’s hard to ask for favors when you didn’t treat your partners as true partners just a few months ago.

When the heat got too much, the conference relented and came back to play.  But the initial cancellation meant they didn’t get to build any wiggle room into their schedule. And now, they’re going to complain that the system isn’t fair?

This is exactly why I wrote what I did back in July. You needed to either be in or out on playing. You couldn’t be wishy washy. The Big Ten made its bed and now has to lie in it.

And yes, that does punish the kids at Ohio State who didn’t have anything to do with the decision making at the conference level. But allowing them into the playoff punishes the kids at Texas A&M, who could miss out on a playoff despite only losing to Alabama on the road.

Sankey likely will be more polite than I would be, but I hope he tells the Big Ten to take a walk.

The SEC and ACC can carry this sport without the Big Ten. Nobody is going to question the legitimacy of a champion if Clemson plays Alabama in the final or if Notre Dame plays Florida. But I think there would be a lot of people who would question the legitimacy of a champion if it included an Ohio State or Northwestern team who only had to win 8 or 9 games.

Those who live in Florida already have to deal with one imaginary champion. We don’t need another.

Featured imaged used under Creative Commons license courtesy Mike Pettigano