Big Ten, Pac-12 Postpone 2020 College Football Seasons

ACROSS AMERICA — The Big Ten and Pac-12 have postponed their 2020 fall football seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic, taking two of college football's five power conferences out of a crumbling season.

Official statements from both conferences canceling all fall sports were made on Tuesday, while both left open the possibility those sports seasons could be held in the spring.

“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.

“As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall."

A similar statement was made by Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott.

“The health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports has been our number one priority since the start of this current crisis,” Scott said. “Our student-athletes, fans, staff and all those who love college sports would like to have seen the season played this calendar year as originally planned, and we know how disappointing this is.”

Five months after the first spikes in coronavirus cases in the U.S. led to the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament, the still raging pandemic is tearing down a sport that generates billion of dollars for the schools that compete in it.

But even after both major conferences made the decision, President Donald Trump continued to promote the idea of moving forward with the 2020 college football season.

"We want to get football in colleges," Trump said during his Tuesday news briefing on the coronavirus. "These are young people, and they won't have a problem with the China Virus."

"Most of them," he said, referring to the players, "will never get it (coronavirus), statistically."

The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference are still moving forward with plans to conduct a season as college football's lack of centralized leadership has left every conference to decide for itself.

The Big Ten's announcement came six days after the conference that includes historic programs such as Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska and Penn State had released a revised conference-only football schedule that it hoped would help it navigate a fall season with potential COVID-19 disruptions.

Over the last month, conferences have been reworking schedules in the hopes of being able to buy some time and play a season. The Big Ten was the first to go to conference-only play, doing it in early July.

The Pac-12 followed two days later and eventually all the Power Five conferences switched to either all or mostly conference play.

The first Football Bowl Subdivision conference to pull the plug on a fall season was the Mid-American Conference on Saturday, and then the Mountain West did the same on Monday.

But those conferences don't have the revenue, reach and history of the Big Ten, which seemed positioned to pour resources into trying to protect its athletes from getting and spreading COVID-19.

The 14 Big Ten schools span from Maryland and Rutgers on the East Coast to Iowa and Nebraska out west.

Not only has it been one of the most successful conferences on the field, but off the field it has become one of the wealthiest. With its lucrative television network, the conference distributes about $50 million per year to its members.

The Pac-12's members are in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.