When news breaks, it is important to think through all of the possible angles as to why it’s happening. When considering all the possibilities, ulterior motives are always in play. The Big Ten’s decision to not play non-conference games is one that will be discussed all day. But how many will discuss that the Big Ten and all of the other Power 5 conferences could move away from worrying about the rest of college football? I doubt there will be more than a few words on it. But this is a real possibility. Big Ten and other conferences could do a trial run and see if they like it using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse.

People might think that is absurd, but give it a thought. More times than not, teams are playing two or three mid-majors per year. Sometimes, they’re playing an FCS school as well. All of those schools demand a cost to come to get their asses kicked. Other times, the team will cash out millions and find a way to win. If it’s college hoops, it leads to Jon Rothstein, my favorite robot, has the line of ‘team x lost a buy game, the epitome of brutality.’ That goes away. Buy games aren’t there and the teams save all that money for them.

The Power Five schools likely make enough money to push forward with their version of college football. They can add player likeness to the mix and it’s all over for the NCAA. But without a test of no MAC, American, Sun Belt, Mountain West, they’re not going to know if this will be able to happen. The NCAA should be very worried about the Big Ten cutting out these smaller schools and only playing their conference for a year.

NCAA refused to be the decision-making for COVID. If they added a task force or an interim commissioner, they could have helped navigate these waters. Instead, they left it up to the conferences which give them the right to test things out like this which could lead to some scary ramifications for the NCAA.

Charlie.