Why The Chaos Regarding College Football Season

While I was guesting on Fox Business with Stuart Varney this morning on the subject of the cancellation of the Mid-American Conference fall sports season, a message along the ticker read, "Big 10 to cancel season,” - a report that proved to be premature. However, the Mountain West Conference did announce that they were postponing fall sports until the spring. Who is in charge here and why the chaos? Why is there a patchwork quilt of disparate approaches and decision making when it comes to college sports this fall?

Professional sports are clearly played for profit. All of the leagues have commissioners and players associations. If an agreement cannot be reached between the players and management on the details of the season, under NLRB rules, management can declare an impasse. When an impasse occurs between parties in a labor dispute, management has the right to impose its own rules. This is what occurred in Major League Baseball. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the length and conditions under which the 2020 season would be resumed and players had the right to participate or opt out.

Ostensibly, the NCAA controls college sports. It should have been in a position to listen to expert medical advice and recommendations and mandate the conditions under which college football could be played this year. However, the power in college sports actually resides in the conferences themselves. Powerful conferences like the Big 10 and SEC do their own television contracts and play in front of mammoth football crowds. Because the NCAA could not or would not issue guidelines, the decision making has devolved to the conferences themselves, leading to a lack of uniformity.

Moving along the power chain, you have the individual university’s board of trustees and president. The athletic director can make recommendations. There have always been university presidents and faculty who see college sports as outsized and wielding too much influence. This is not the case in a conference like the SEC. College administrations also regard themselves as fiduciaries for a student population which is younger and less rational about decision making. The recent spike in cases among people between the ages of 17 and 23 years old, who are ignoring the recommended health and safety guidelines, that responsibility is reinforced.

The only certainty in this pandemic is that outside of mask wearing and social distancing, there is no consensus on why the United States has the worst problem fighting this on the face of the Earth. The NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, WNBA and NFL are all functioning with rules in place. College athletics is the outlier. It will be interesting to watch the developments unfold and to see if some games will be played.