See you later, college football.
The Big Ten has voted to cancel the 2020 college football season in a historic move that stems from concerns related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, multiple people with knowledge of the decision confirmed to the Free Press.
The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the decision. A formal announcement is expected to Tuesday, the sources said.
The presidents voted, 12-2, Sunday to end the fall sports in the conference. Michigan and Michigan State — which both has physicians as presidents — voted to end the season, sources said. Only Nebraska and Iowa voted to play, Dan Patrick said on his radio show Monday.
The move comes two days after the Mid-American Conference became the first in the FBS to cancel ts season, and sources told the Free Press the Big Ten is trying to coordinate its announcement with other Power Five conferences.
Sources told the Free Press on Saturday that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren prefers a spring football season, although no decision has been made.
On Monday, Michigan State football moved its scheduled off day from Tuesday to Monday because of the uncertainty of the 2020 season, three people with direct knowledge of the situation told the Free Press. Iowa canceled Monday's 11 a.m. practice, according to the Des Moines Register. And Purdue reportedly rescheduled its media availability.
As of Monday morning, MSU and Michigan players had not yet been told of any decision to cancel the 2020 season, sources at each school said. Two sources said MSU coaches were hopeful more information would be provided Monday.
Presidents are trying to figure out how all this fits with other conferences and they want athletic directors to handle logistics of determining if spring season is possible, sources told the Free Press. The situation reportedly is changing by the hour, which is why the Big Ten has not made its announcement official.
The cancellation of season comes a week after the Big Ten revealed an updated 10-game conference-only schedule for 2020, and just days after teams in the conference opened fall camp.
It also comes as players across the nation are opting out because of concerns about how the virus could impact their short- and long-term health. Four Michigan State players said they wouldn't play in 2020, and one team source said more players were expected to follow.
MSU linebacker Marcel Lewis, who opted out Saturday, said he lost a family member to the virus and doesn't want to risk play. Offensive tackle Justin Stevens, who also opted out Saturday, said he has a respiratory condition that could make him high risk. A number of other players around the Big Ten — including Minnesota wide receiver Rashod Bateman, Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons and Purdue wideout Rondale Moore — also announced they would not play this season and begin preparation for the 2021 NFL draft.
Indiana offensive lineman Brady Feeney, whose is suffering from COVID-19-related heart issues and whose mother wrote an impassioned message imploring the college football world to take it seriously, took to Twitter on Monday morning with his own urging schools and players "to listen to our medical experts."
"Covid-19 is serious," Brady Feeney wrote. "I never thought that I would have serious health complications from this virus, but look at what happened."
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and one of the members of the group advising the NCAA on COVID-19, told the Free Press on Saturday a college football season no longer appeared feasible.
"When we were trying to think about ways to make it safe, we were at a time when there was kind of more control of the virus, and you've got less control of the virus now than we had several months earlier during when the stay at home orders were just starting to be lifted," Adalja said. "And then the other thing that's made it what made it much more difficult is football is a contact sport, which is going to require some amount of testing of players. The turnaround times for for outpatient testing are really unacceptable for being able to safely clear somebody to play.
"When you have this type of problem with testing, where it might take days to get a result back, it really makes it extremely challenging for this to occur."
Both MSU president Samuel Stanley (immunology and infectious diseases) and U-M president Mark Schlissel (immunology and internal medicine) are medical doctors.
Contact Orion Sang at osang@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @orion_sang. Read more on the Michigan Wolverines and sign up for our Wolverines newsletter.
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