Just one day after the Big Ten made its announcement, the Pac-12 is following suit.
On Friday afternoon, the Pac-12 announced through a press release that several fall sports will participate in conference-only schedules in order to secure a more safe-to-play environment. Among the sports included are football, men's and women's soccer, and women's volleyball.
https://twitter.com/pac12/status/1281725215584563200
“The health and safety of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports continues to be our number one priority,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott in the statement. “Our decisions have and will be guided by science and data, and based upon the trends and indicators over the past days, it has become clear that we need to provide ourselves with maximum flexibility to schedule, and to delay any movement to the next phase of return-to-play activities.”
The Big Ten made the same announcement on Thursday, which reportedly
caught the Southeastern Conference off-guard and quickly kicked off a domino effect that spread to the west coast-based Power 5 conference. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey stated that he is unsure of when the SEC could/will make a similar move.
The Pac-12 noted that student-athletes who "choose not to participate in intercollegiate athletics during the coming academic year because of safety concerns about COVID-19 will continue to have their scholarships honored by their university and will remain in good standing with their team.", which is some good news to hear. They also plan to announce the conference-only schedule no later than July 31.
How long before the SEC heads in the same direction?
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