A Grip on Sports: Big Ten’s change in football schedule reverberates throughout the nation

A GRIP ON SPORTS • In an unrelenting time of bad news for sports in America, we dug deep and found some good news just for you. It’s what we do – occasionally.

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• What’s the good news, you ask? You’ll have to keep reading to find out. Before then, however, you have to imitate Andy Dufresne and crawl through a river of effluent to reach your goal.

Yes, bait and switch. Someday I’m going to make a great salesman. Today, however, is not that day. Today we start with the latest college football news. It’s not good. You had one Power 5 conference – the ACC – announce Thursday it was postponing all competition until Sept. 1, a move that doesn’t affect football directly – the first game for a conference member is scheduled for Sept. 2 – but served as a warning shot across the day’s bow.

The broadside was delivered a little while later by the Big Ten. The second-richest conference in the country sank all nonconference football games with one shot. Washington hosting Michigan? Torpedoed. Oregon bringing Ohio State to Eugene? At the bottom of the Willamette River. A big part of BYU’s schedule? Gone.

The conference felt it needed more control over interactions among players this season. More control of games if the pandemic means it has to make quick changes. More control of the situation in a time of uncontrollable chaos. Good luck with that.

The Pac-12 is expected to follow suit, putting together an 11-game schedule in which new games between conference members are just plugged in, or a 10-game slate that is all new. Either way, the wallpaper schedule you have on your iPhone already seems a bit out-of-date.

And it may get out of date even more quickly. The unrelenting bad news concerning COVID-19 continued today. The numbers rose at a record rate again. Hospitalizations, which always trail the infection numbers a bit, also rose. ICU numbers will rise in the near future, as will the most negative of outcomes. It’s just the way this works.

But maybe, just maybe, we will reach another hump. And not all that far from now. Maybe masks will become cool. Maybe the most at-risk – hey, right here – will stay out of harms way. Maybe the simplest of measure will kick in and slow it down. Maybe a vaccine will hit the market earlier than anyone thought.

Until then, however, more and more leagues and schools are trying to save the football season by moving fall sports to the spring. It happened in California at the community college level. It happened in the Northwest at the same level (our Ryan Collingwood has this story on the NWAC doing that, though the conference doesn’t sponsor football anymore). And many states are contemplating following New Mexico’s lead – I don’t believe I’ve ever typed that sentence before – and move fall high school contact sports into next year.

And that is our first glimmer of the best of things: hope.

There are people in our midst whose only goal right now is to figure out a way to safely keep athletic events going. Of finding a way to have football and volleyball and soccer at the high school, college and professional level continue in this time of pain and suffering. They may not be successful. They may discover a path. But we have to be thankful they are trying.

• OK, here’s the good news. Today is July 10. My dad, were he alive today, would be celebrating his 95th birthday. That makes me smile.

Oh sure, it hurts he’s not here anymore. But the memories I have of him, of his life, of his influence on those around him, they are still in play. They are actually better then they were.

The good times have grown even larger in my mind, the hard times either faded or been polished by the passage of the days. Painful memories, their lessons learned and taken to heart, disappear into a mist. Joyful ones shine brighter, lighting the days ahead. That’s cool. That’s life.

And it gives me hope for the future.

Some day most of you will be sitting around with your kids and grand kids, your friends and neighbors, talking about the pandemic of 2020. Maybe of 2020-21. You will have, like our friend Andy, emerged on the other side, having been washed clean.

There will be other problems, sure. But the ones we are living through today? They will have passed.

We will have suffered. We will have survived. We will have learned.

I always wondered why the Roaring 20s were the Roaring 20s. Now I think I’m beginning to know the answer. After a world war and a pandemic, society busted loose. Life was precious. Time was precious. Everything, from sports to revelries, took on oversized importance. It was a time of excess fueled by a few years of awful agony.

When this is all over, we may see the same thing occur again. I, for one, am looking forward to wearing spats and a Panama hat while doing the jitterbug.

• One last note. My wife will be on furlough from her position at Sacred Heart Medical Center next week. An unpaid vacation as the hospital tries to rebound from a coronavirus-induced financial disaster.

So she’ll be home with me every day. We might even come up with something to do, safely of course, outside the house. A day hike or a contactless trip to a beautiful vista somewhere close to home. I’m anticipating at least one or two days of not writing and instead spending the time with her, helping her relax and unwind. Doing my duty as a life partner.

If we are going to skip a day, I’ll let you know. So you can plan a party. Just wear your mask and stay socially distant please. 

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Gonzaga: The Money Team, featuring former GU star Kyle Wiltjer, Eastern alum Jacob Wiley and Idaho’s Jeff Ledbetter, was eliminated from The Basketball Tournament yesterday. Jim Meehan watched and has this story of their last-second defeat. … Elsewhere in the WCC, BYU’s Mark Pope is remaining hopeful about hoops.

WSU: Around the Pac-12 and college sports, Larry Scott’s future is the subject of another column. … The loss of the key nonconference games for Washington and Oregon dominate the Pacific Northwest news. … The Huskies had zero new cases of the virus in their latest round of testing. … Arizona State’s Herm Edwards is trying to navigate the rough waters. … In basketball news, Utah got some good news yesterday. See, we found some. … And Chris Petersen is in a new position at Washington. It has nothing to do with football.

CCS and NIC: We link Ryan’s story on the schedule changes again here.

Preps: The unsettled nature of the upcoming high school sports seasons has coaches on edge – including this one. Dave Nichols focuses on football and how it may be impacted in this story. … There has been a virus outbreak at a high school southwest of Portland, leading many to believe fall sports are going to be tough to pull off. … In Utah, however, there will be falls sports come heck or high water.

Mariners: Our old friend and colleague, Steve the Wingman, from our fill-in days on the defunct Patchin and Lukens show, joined Larry Weir yesterday for the latest Press Box podcast. Steve is right up there among the most-rabid Mariner fans I know. … Kendall Graveman just can’t wait to get back on the mound. … Baseball released next year’s schedule yesterday. Maybe to distract us from the chances this year’s might disappear. Who knows? But everyone will start April 1 in 2021.

Seahawks: Season-ticket holders can get a full refund and not lose their place in the Hawks’ ticket hierarchy. … Is a trade for Chris Jones possible? … Quinton Dunbar’s legal issues are not fading away.

Sounders: Here’s some more good news. The Sounders are playing again. Tonight in fact. It’s on ESPN.

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• A 90-degree day tomorrow? No thanks. My top is about 86 these days. But sunshine is always welcome. Until later …