Conference commissioners losing revenue are in no rush to return to hosting college events until students are back on campus.
That was the message delivered Wednesday from the College Football Playoff Management Committee in a conference call with Vice President Mike Pence. The conversation of the call was focused on the NCAA approach to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pence, according to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, was focused on getting things “back to normal.” Pence was appointed the chief of the coronavirus taskforce by President Donald Trump.
The liability involved in colleges and universities returning to action amidst a pandemic is considered a major hurdle.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he believes professional sports could return without fans in the venues to minimize the risk of infection or further spread of the virus.
The call with the College Football Playoff Management Committee hit on the financial impact on college athletics. What became clear from the start was the message that college football will not return until students are allowed on campus.
“Our players are students. If we’re not in college, we’re not having contests,” Bowlsby told CBS of the call. “Our message was, we need to get universities and colleges back open, that we were education-based programs, and we weren’t going to have sports until we had something closer to normal college going on.”
The White House arranged the call with major college sports’ top conferences earlier in the week.
Commissioners from Power 5 schools and independent Notre Dame participated in the call.
“(Pence) expressed his gratitude for what we did with the basketball tournaments,” Bowlsby said. “He acknowledged it was difficult and expensive to cancel conference tournaments and not play the NCAA Tournament.”
Members of the CFB Management Committee include commissioners of the AAC (Mike Aresco), ACC (John Swofford), Big Ten (Kevin Warren), Big 12 (Bowlsby), Conference USA (Judy MacLeod), MAC (Jon Steinbrecher), MWC (Craig Thompson), Pac-12 (Larry Scott), SEC (Greg Sankey) and Sun Belt (Keith Gill).
