PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- The Big Ten and the Pac 12 conferences made the decision on Tuesday to forego the fall football season within the conference. But they were the only two Power 5 dominoes to fall.
What about the rest?
"Right now, it's 'let's see if we can do this.' There's no reason right now on August 12th to nix. You can maybe start a month from now or two months from now so let's just wait and see. I think that's the idea. I don't think they said, 'Hey we're playing.' I think they said, 'We're not going to say we're not playing right now.'"
"So much of the data and so much of the research and some of the criticisms from what the Big Ten and the Pac 12 did made people come out and say, 'What are you doing? Look at this, think about this.' Naturally, it's such a huge undertaking to cancel the season, I think people want to be extremely prudent about making that move. I think you have a conference that's kind of timid at times, it doesn't want to do that unless its 100% sure. They didn't pull the plug on the season last night. They maybe grabbed the cord, but they didn't pull it."
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The Big Ten did pull the plug. But James Franklin expressed a desire to play. Would Penn State find a way to play anyway in the fall, as in playing elsewhere or with a non-Big Ten schedule?
Franklin wasn't the only one to voice a desire to play in the Big Ten. Ryan Day of Ohio State, Jim Harbaugh of Michigan and Scott Frost of Nebraska did as well. With that, the cancellation caused great confusion and disappointment.
"Any problem with testing, in terms of numbers (positive tests), all had been early. 13 of the 14 Big Ten teams practiced on Monday except for Rutgers, the only one that didn't. So the players have dedicated themselves to following the protocols. The medical people put together great protocols to give them the best chance possible to do this.
There was confidence by the players expressed in the protocols, confidence by the coaches expressed in the protocols and also confidence that the players would follow it. I think that was actually playing out and bearing out exactly the way they hoped it would because the testing numbers across the board were coming back very strong."
Both Casazza and Jones don't see a spring football season being reasonable and Casazza said "there's no logistic way."