Barbour outlines viability of spring football season
It’s been nearly a week since the Big Ten announced that it will not be playing sports this fall. The league’s decision has sparked a backlash among some players and their families – a backlash that has likely been amplified by the full-speed-ahead stance that three of the Big Ten’s Power Five conference brethren have adopted, with the SEC, ACC and Big 12 all moving forward with their plans to play football roughly on schedule.
But to anyone wondering whether the petitions and letters that have been circulating in recent days might change the minds of the Big Ten’s decision-makers, Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour had a firm response on Monday afternoon. As far as Barbour is concerned, it’s time to move on – in this case, to the spring of 2021, which is when the league hopes to stage a modified fall athletic season.
“The presidents and chancellors made their decision based on science, based on information from medical experts, and based on concerns and uncertainties in a number of different categories, and don’t see that changing,” Barbour said. “But I also appreciate the passion of our parents and our student-athletes and I appreciate where their hearts and their heads are.
“In terms of the viability of a spring season for football and all of our [fall] sports, I absolutely see it being viable. Obviously, it’s going to depend on where the virus is at the time. All of our sports are going to depend on that. But being who we are as athletic directors, we turned our attention to that pretty quickly – [last] Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday evening into Wednesday. And along with our coaches, our sports science people and our sports medicine folks, we are far down the road on concepts. Obviously, there’s a lot to be done in terms of dotting I’s and crossing T’s, but we’ve put something together that I think is very compelling and that our student-athletes and our fans and our communities will be pretty interested in.”
Barbour said that while many details remain to be worked out, the league might be ready to unveil some of the broad concepts behind its spring football plans “in the next week or so.”
Even before the Big Ten made its decision, there was a robust debate about the viability of spring football. Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer expressed skepticism, citing the wear and tear on athletes who could be asked to play two seasons in a single calendar year. Barbour herself had labeled it a “last resort” due to the proximity of any proposed spring season to the fall 2021 campaign. But in the days since the league put its fall sports on hold, a number of Meyer’s former Big Ten colleagues have come forward with ideas for how an abbreviated season might be conducted. Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm has offered the most detailed plan to date, proposing cutbacks in contact periods that would lessen the physical toll that players would have to endure in the spring.
Barbour said that Big Ten officials have been mulling how to conduct spring season safely. “That’s where we’re going to rely on our sports science people and our sports medicine folks. We’re going to rely on the science to tell us,” she said. “We’ve already had a lot of conversations about what kind of practices [are possible], how far can we take it back and have it be safe, frankly – number of practices, type of practices, number of games in a spring season vs. number of games in a fall season.
“Just like the decision around COVID, we’re going to rely on the science, we’re going to rely on our experts to tell us when something is too much. I certainly appreciate both Coach Meyer’s position and Coach Brohm’s position and lots of others. Several of our coaches in this conference have put together their thoughts on models that might work. All that does is illustrate the thing that we’re all witnessing, that for every issue here, you’re going to find people on both extremes and everything in the middle in terms of what they believe the answer is, and they all believe they’re right. I’ll respect that and gather information and make the best decisions we can.”
Barbour said that getting Beaver Stadium ready to play in the winter would pose some difficulties. “Obviously,” she said, “we have some challenges there with the infrastructure, as do a number of our stadiums in this league. So that’s obviously one of the challenges that a spring semester football schedule would have to address.”
If football and the other fall sports are moved to the spring, there will be additional difficulties, including the scheduling of facilities. Football, soccer and field hockey have their own dedicated playing venues, but the women’s volleyball team shares Rec Hall with a number of winter and spring sports, such as wrestling, gymnastics and men’s volleyball that might be in the midst of their seasons. Barbour acknowledged those challenges but said that the coaches of Penn State’s fall teams are eager to get their sports restarted, regardless of the compromises that may be necessary.
“There’s been some conversation about how we would schedule facilities, how we would do those kinds of things,” she said. “But in the main, they’re excited about the opportunity, they’re excited about the ability to point to something, to train for something, to use the fall as a true player development [opportunity]. They’re going to look for the silver lining.
“We took a little pause at the middle of last week. I had my own little tantrum in my disappointment that there weren’t going to be any fall sports. But Thursday morning, I got up and we had our leadership team meeting, and I said, guys, I’m fired up. I’m fired up about the opportunity ahead, how we pull this off. It’s going to take a lot of work, not unlike the last five months. I’m fired up to get stuff done. I think our student-athletes and our coaches, for the most part, have taken a very similar approach.”
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