It's Official. We're Back.

[FrantzHardySwag]

Iowa Last Week: 3.5% Positive across all sports

Maryland 2 weeks ago: 9.1% Positive across all sports (considered large breakout)

Rutgers: 4 total positives across all sports this week

Purdue: 2.9% Positive across all sports since returning to campus

Penn State 5.0% Positive across all sports last week.

Keep in mind this was without a plan for sports, so not a whole lot of structure. Getting under 5% should be fairly easy, considering the structure in place and being able to identify a positive immediately and removing that player from the group. Daily testing should drive the % of positive down. 

 

[WyoHusker56]

The 21 day holdout is supposedly to allow for quarantine and then cardiac evaluation after a positive in order to clear the player. So, they are still holding onto the cardiac concerns that have been shot down multiple times and prominent doctors who specialize in athletics have said is not a cause for concern based on current data and reports. Got it.

 

[Toe]

The last thing I am worried about is whether bowl games are going to be played this year or not.  I think the best we can hope for is to have a CFP played this year, and maybe a handful of other bowl games.

Lack of in-person attendance removes a lot of incentive for bowl game hosts. They're basically just left with TV revenue. It'll be interesting to see how TV ratings look this season, and if the networks are willing to cut some one-time deals for this year, and exactly how flexible the NCAA will be with eligibility.

 

[knapplc]

Lack of in-person attendance removes a lot of incentive for bowl game hosts. They're basically just left with TV revenue. It'll be interesting to see how TV ratings look this season, and if the networks are willing to cut some one-time deals for this year.

Most bowl games make more money off of TV revenue, not ticket sales. 

 

[ColoradoHusk]

Lack of in-person attendance removes a lot of incentive for bowl game hosts. They're basically just left with TV revenue. It'll be interesting to see how TV ratings look this season, and if the networks are willing to cut some one-time deals for this year.

I disagree about the lack of in-person attendance.  Most of the bowl games stick around so ESPN has live game inventory over the holiday season.  ESPN owns most of the bowl games played each year, and most bowl games have crappy attendance anyway.

 

[Toe]

Right, and something else I was thinking about is that the TV ratings numbers this year might be skewed a bit because of people watching on TV instead of in-person and watching at home instead of at a crowded sports bar or something. (More screens tuned in, even if it's the same number of people.)

 

[84HuskerLaw]

Does NU get to televise its own games or are we stuck with giving Big Ten all the money?   The Big Ten is a blackhole for money now so without tickets, the loss is still massive.   I hope this is positive but I am afraid we are out of the frying pan and into the fire.  ugh 

 

[ColoradoHusk]

Does NU get to televise its own games or are we stuck with giving Big Ten all the money?   The Big Ten is a blackhole for money now so without tickets, the loss is still massive.   I hope this is positive but I am afraid we are out of the frying pan and into the fire.  ugh 

NU (and all Big Ten teams) will still go through the Big Ten TV partners, so games will be televised on the FOX networks, the ESPN networks, and BTN.

 

[knapplc]

Does NU get to televise its own games or are we stuck with giving Big Ten all the money?   The Big Ten is a blackhole for money now so without tickets, the loss is still massive.   I hope this is positive but I am afraid we are out of the frying pan and into the fire.  ugh 

We make more money via the BTN contract/revenue sharing than we've ever made before. Sure, ticket revenue is going to suck to lose but there's still a pandemic out there. Kind of a pesky problem.

 

[suh_fan93]

[No message]

 

[knapplc]

If the NCAA allowed JD Spielman to transfer and play immediately this year with all the obstacles they would have had to ignore, there is no legit reason they should block these players.

But that's presuming they still want to play. If these guys are first or second round NFL guys, maybe they don't play an abbreviated season and focus on the NFL draft.

 

[UniversalMartin]

No fans.

I would assume no fans has to do more about not creating unnecessary travel as I dont see how you could not accommodate 10k fans in an 80k stadium and disperse them enough where close contact is not even possible for the most part. Sections are closed off and you are only allowed access to bathrooms, etc in your section

 

[TGHusker]

How do you spell 'bad guy"  I think this writer's name will do just fine  - a  Snooty,   NW U grad/instructor.   

Quoted in part below, she states this is the darkest day in the conferences history and blames it on the "Nebraska -ization" of the B1G which she then links to the Trump-ization of the B1G.  Basically wrapping us with the Trump flag.   She also blames some loud mouthed coaches - a not so veiled attack on Frost and Daley.   

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2020/09/16/big-ten-football-decision-marks-darkest-day/5793238002/

That’s the Big Ten for you, concerned about science, medicine and safety. Let the football factories of the SEC, Big 12 and ACC (Clemson’s playground) continue playing; the Big Ten was doing the right thing looking out for its student-athletes, treating them almost no differently than the student body at large, and that was all that mattered.

Then came Wednesday, the darkest day in Big Ten sports history, the day the vaunted conference caved. It choked. It got scared. It became the SEC.

Just as the Big Ten was looking smarter by the day as COVID-19 outbreaks popped up at Michigan State, Wisconsin and Maryland while other conferences playing football announced COVID-related postponements and soaring cases, the league’s presidents reversed themselves and decided to steer their schools and their football programs right into the teeth of what are predicted to be some of the worst days of the pandemic in October and November.

This is the Nebraska-ization of the Big Ten. Who would have thought that when Nebraska and Ohio State and a few of the league’s other squeakiest wheels started whining about missing out on football, the Big Ten presidents would buckle rather than stand up to them?

Or, we could call it the Trumpeting of the Big Ten. It was just two weeks ago that Trump, desperate to win votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, told the conference to play football. Originally, the league stood its ground. Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway aptly called it “cheap politics.” But wouldn’t you know, the university presidents ended up following right along, giving Trump exactly what he wanted.

I never would have expected the Big Ten presidents to be so shaky, so fearful, so afraid of their own shadow. I grew up in Big Ten country, in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, in a family that spent fall Saturdays at Michigan games. I went to Northwestern University, where I received undergraduate and master’s degrees. I’m still very involved at NU to this day; in addition to being a professor of practice at the Medill School of Journalism, I’m a member of Northwestern’s 64-person board of trustees. I had no role in any votes or decisions NU made about playing sports in the pandemic.

While much of the blame for the awful about-face goes to the university presidents who chose money and football over sanity and caution, new Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren also contributed greatly to this public relations nightmare. This is a man who clearly is in way over his head. The poor guy was outmaneuvered by a few loud-mouth football coaches, for heaven’s sake. No matter how he explains it, it’s clear that he and the league flip-flopped so Ohio State can try to win a national title and the league can still make lots of money off the backs of 18-to-22-year-olds in the middle of a pandemic.

As we move into October and November, into what the experts say will be our worst days as COVID combines with the flu, the stops and starts of the conferences that are trying to play now tell us there are likely to be postponements and perhaps cancellations of Big Ten games. 

Maybe some teams will get through a full season. Perhaps others will have to stop after a game or two, or miss games in the middle. Hopefully no one will get sick or spread COVID to others. We’ll see. This is the potential chaos the Big Ten chose when it decided to sell its soul for a few football games.

 

[knapplc]

I would assume no fans has to do more about not creating unnecessary travel as I dont see how you could not accommodate 10k fans in an 80k stadium and disperse them enough where close contact is not even possible for the most part. Sections are closed off and you are only allowed access to bathrooms, etc in your section

I'm not sure what their reasoning is. I think we could easily accommodate fans, and I think we could keep them safe. And I think that should have been a school-by-school decision, based on the risks from their region.

 

[ColoradoHusk]

I'm not sure what their reasoning is. I think we could easily accommodate fans, and I think we could keep them safe. And I think that should have been a school-by-school decision, based on the risks from their region.

Moos commented that he would prefer a school-by-school decision on fan accommodation, but he also said he didn't want that to be a sticking point to no football at all.  That's why he agreed to the initial rule of no fans in the stadiums.