The NCAA, which seemingly has the power to count the number of Corn Flakes in a college football player’s cereal bowl, inexplicably has no authority to cancel the season or otherwise protect the players amid a pandemic. However, there’s one thing the NCAA can do.
It can cancel the conference championship games. At a Tuesday meeting of the NCAA board of governors, it may.
As explained by Megan Ryan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, such a decision wouldn’t encompass the College Football Playoff, which operates beyond the auspices of the NCAA. But cancellation of the conference championships would throw a wrench into the efforts to whittle the field for the final four. That said, the conferences could also stage their own championship games.
Regardless, the NCAA’s cancellation of the various conference championship games would put plenty of pressure on the conferences and the schools to scrap their seasons. Given the money involved in staging SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big 12, and Big Ten games, however, that may not be enough.
Of those conferences, only the Big Ten has not announced a decision for the 2020 season. It could cancel the season. The other four seem intent on pushing forward, even if they will be setting up superspreader systems in the cities where the colleges are located, endangering members of the population who are vulnerable to a serious outcome.