Pac-12 postpones all sports through the end of the calendar year

On Tuesday, the Pac-12 announced that it will postpone fall sports until the spring. Brett McMurphy from Stadium was the first to report the decision and the conference soon made an official announcement shortly after.

“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,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said in a statement. “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. “Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble,” he said. “Our athletic programs are a part of broader campuses in communities where in many cases the prevalence of COVID-19 is significant. We will continue to monitor the situation and when conditions change we will be ready to explore all options to play the impacted sports in the new calendar year.”

“We know that this is a difficult day for our student-athletes, and our hearts go out to them and their families,” added Scott. “We have made clear that all of their scholarships will be guaranteed, and that as a Conference we are strongly encouraging the NCAA to grant them an additional year of eligibility.”

The conference also announced that when conditions improve, it would consider a return to competition for impacted sports after January 1, 2021.

This comes to no surprise as the Big Ten, the first of the Power Five conferences, made the same decision earlier in the day. Plenty of other conferences and individual schools have also delay its fall sports. However, at this moment, the SEC, ACC and Big 12 have plans to play.

Football becomes the most affected from this decision, as the hope is that the teams will play in the spring. Will players be able to play in the spring and then the following fall? What players might opt out of playing a spring season to just enter the NFL Draft?

The Olympic sports also becomes a logistical issues. Soccer, a fall sport, shares a field with lacrosse, a spring sport. Volleyball will be clustered in with sports such as men’s and women’s basketball, gymnastics and wrestling to use Desert Financial Arena. The question also rises that without the profit of football and lack of money coming in, what Olympic sports get cut due to budget issues?

What is your opinion on the decision to not play sports in the fall? Will we see a spring football season in your opinion?

This story will be updated as more information is released.