NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Powers Warren took part in the first day of fall practice at Mississippi State Monday. It’s a strange irony considering his father, Kevin Warren, is the Commissioner of the Big Ten and one of the people that led the charge for that conference to cancel the fall football season.
The move, the Big Ten says, was done out of an abundance of caution in an effort to protect the health and safety of student-athletes. So why is Warren’s own son still playing football this fall?
The Big Ten commissioner has not answered that question. But it’s just part of the ongoing public relations debacle facing the conference since it decided to punt the football season into next spring.
If the Big 12 looked weak and on the verge of collapse during conference realignment 10 years ago, the Big Ten looks arrogant, out of touch and ready to shoot itself in both feet after alienating coaches, players, parents, alumni and other conferences with its decision and the inability to coherently explain the reasons behind it.
First, let’s start with the timing. The league made the decision last Tuesday, less than a week after announcing its revised, 10-game conference-only schedule. The schedule was brilliant. Starting as early as Labor Day weekend, it was collapsible if need be, with common bye weeks and nearly an extra month at the end of the season to make up games before the date other conferences had already scheduled their championship games.
The Big Ten also announced stringent testing protocols that were the most aggressive of any conference. At Illinois, experts were looking into doing daily testing of student-athletes, an effort that should be made easier by a new saliva test developed at Yale, in partnership with the NBA, over the weekend.
But alas, the Big Ten had already canceled its season.
Why make the call now? Why not see if the testing protocols, which significantly lowered positive tests amongst athletes as the summer progressed, continue to work? Why not see if the schedule can be played? Why not try to give the student-athletes who overwhelmingly want to play the opportunity to do just that. That seems to at least be the attitude of the ACC, Big 12 and SEC, where Powers Warren plays.
But Kevin Warren’s league cited safety concerns and then kind of floated a Journal of the American Medical Association report that showed an elevated risk for cases of Myocarditis after individuals contract COVID-19 as one of its chief medical concerns. While concerns of Myocarditis need to be looked into further, the study’s methods and findings have received significant criticism from the medical community, from a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic to a lead researcher at the University of Michigan. One expert in the United Kingdom described the paper as “gibberish”.
But it was enough for Big Ten presidents to be sufficiently spooked to pull the plug on the season before it even started, and apparently without a vote.
Asked about the presidential decision, Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said it’s “unclear” whether a vote actually took place. University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel described the process as more of a deliberation than a vote.
While it’s still unclear how the decision ultimately came to be, it is very clear how the decision has been received. Players and coaches feel betrayed, students and alumni are angry, and even other conferences are left puzzled by the fact the Big Ten didn’t even give them a heads up before making the announcement.
So where does the Big Ten go from here? The conference says a spring season is viable, but other than a couple of coaches drawing up schedules on the back of napkins no plan has been put forward, and, if we’re being honest, a spring schedule that would likely require more than 20 games in a calendar year should be a non-starter if the conference is truly worried about the health and safety of its student-athletes.
Meanwhile, there is a growing push for the Big Ten to reconsider. Players have been adamant about the fact that they want to play. Even parents of players at Iowa, Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska are among those that have already written letters asking for the conference to re-start the season.
They understand the risks of COVID-19, but also understand that football is an inherently risky sport and that life must be lived by calculating risk. Several players have noted that they feel safer in the football facility under strict protocols than anywhere else on campus.
And if Big Ten leaders, like Kevin Warren, are going to make the decision to take football off the table for this year they need to be held accountable. It’s time they answer tough questions about who made the call and why they reached their decision. They need to show the data that informed their decision that football is too unsafe to go on, instead of standing behind non-votes and vague platitudes about student-athlete health.
Warren should start by answering why he’s okay with his son playing football in the SEC, but not with any student-athlete in his own conference having the same opportunity.
