Fall without college sports? Reactions to the Big Ten's decision

There were those who thought the Big Ten had no choice but to call off fall sports. Others reacted to the decision, and the whole idea, with varying degrees of astonishment and outrage.

Here's a look at some of what was being written and said about the move.

Columnist Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star asked a simple question: "What the hell is going on here?"

He wrote: "Here we are in August, and more than 162,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and more than 5 million have tested positive, and with the economy in the dumper the country has seen the worst unemployment levels since the Great Depression. And then comes a day like Tuesday, when five months of mixed messages come to a head as Marion County does one thing, the Big Ten and Pac-12 do another, and the medical director of the ACC comes along with the most ridiculous, most unbelievable, most absurd Pollyanna pile of horse manure I've heard since Jan. 22, Feb. 23 or Feb. 27 or March 10.

"What's going on here? What's happening? The thing that always seems to happen, in a vacuum of leadership: Chaos."

Read Doyel's entire column here.

What did the medical director of the ACC say? Here's what Dr. Cameron Wolfe of Duke University told Sports Business Daily's Michael Smith: "We believe we can mitigate it down to a level that makes everyone safe. Can we safely have two teams meet on the field? I would say yes. Will it be tough? Yes. Will it be expensive and hard and lots of work? For sure. But I do believe you can sufficiently mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that's no different than living as a student on campus."

The full story from Sports Business Daily is here.
Albert Breer, the senior correspondent for Sports Illustrated's Monday Morning Quarterback web site, said the Big Ten's actions had the markings of the NFL all over it.

Breer also answered critics who have accused journalists of rooting for the decisions that have been made to postpone or cancel college seasons.

Meanwhile, there's anger in Nebraska. Remember when there was excitement about the Cornhuskers joining the Big Ten? Now there's a thought that the Big Ten's move could signal their departure.

Tom Shatel of the Omaha World-Herald is angry. He wrote:

"This will be the day that changed everything. The shape of universities. The fabric of college football. The strength and charm of so many college towns. The dominoes are about to fall and they're going to land on a lot of good people. And one might happen that we didn't expect. Will we remember this as the beginning of the end of Nebraska and the Big Ten? Absolutely. And the way the Big Ten and Kevin Warren have conducted themselves, that would be a good thing."

He also wrote: "You can believe the Big Ten presidents care about the well-being of student-athletes. That's real. But believe, too, the Big Ten leaders are very much into optics and image and being on the right side of history."

Here's Shatel's full column, in which he calls commissioner Kevin Warren's performance in an interview on Big Ten Network "embarrassing."

Someone had to make a comparison between football and war, right? In this case, it was Lou Holtz, who spent two seasons at Minnesota in the 1980s before going to Notre Dame, in an interview with Fox News. Holtz drops a reference to D-Day into his reaction.

In Wisconsin, Badgers football coach Paul Chryst and athletics director Barry Alvarez tried to look at what comes next. Here's what they told madison.com with a mix of optimism and caution.

Alvarez cautioned against expecting two full seasons in the spring and then the fall: "(Chryst) said two full seasons back-to-back like that is too much. So, taking that into consideration, my natural thinking is six, eight games, something like that, if you do something this spring.

Chryst on what a spring season could look like: "I think there's some things you could do in the spring. You could do some games against other opponents, almost like preseason games in the NFL, play against teams you've never played against before and have great matchups."

Here's the full article

Brian Stensaas contributed reporting for his article