There will be no Big Ten football season this fall, and there is disappointment spread across the conference.
The conference’s chancellors and presidents voted Tuesday to cancel the fall football season and pursue a spring season due to the coronavirus pandemic, it announced.
“The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our [medical experts], it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.”
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Members of programs across the conference, from University Presidents to head football coaches to starting quarterbacks, shared their reaction to the news:
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway:
Ohio State AD Gene Smith:
Ohio State QB Justin Fields:
Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh:
Michigan AD Warde Manuel:
Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez:
Nebraska leadership (Head football coach Scott Frost, AD Bill Moos, Chancellor Ronnie Green, President Ted Carter)
Northwestern Quarterback Peyton Ramsey:
Illinois AD Josh Whitman:
Indiana AD Scott Dolson:
The Big Ten is the third Football Bowl Subdivision to cancel its fall season, joining the Mid-American and Mountain West Conferences, and the first among the Power Five Conferences. UConn and UMass, which are FBS independents, and Old Dominion, a member of Conference USA, have also made individual decisions to cancel their seasons.
The Big Ten’s decision to punt comes days after the league, at the advice and counsel of medical experts, indefinitely froze its training camp protocols in the acclimatization period with helmets only and no pads or contact. The league had previously announced a revised 10-game, conference-only schedule while cautioning its release did not guarantee a season would be played.
The decision comes after a rocky preseason that saw six football teams in the league forced to halt voluntary workouts at some point due to COVID-19 issues, including an outbreak involving 30-plus athletes and staffers at Rutgers and a seriously-ill player at Indiana, while other schools continued training despite high positive case totals. The Big Ten also had summer virus issues with non-football teams.
(NJ Advance Media’s James Kratch contributed to this report.)
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Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com.