Big Ten Coach Reportedly Shoots Down Rumors Of Meetings Discussing Fall Football Restart

Reports that the head coaches of the Big Ten conference were meeting in order to bring back fall football might have been premature, according to sportswriter Tom Dienhart. He posted on Twitter on Friday that he talked to one unnamed Big Ten coach who said there wasn’t any meeting at all.

The writer said he exchanged several texts with the source and asked him flat out if there had been some kind of get-together to discuss a way to play this before January. His source responded that if there was, it wasn’t a scheduled meeting and he wasn’t given an invite. The source also said that as far as he was concerned, the next time they will be talking as a group would be next Thursday.

Dienhart’s post was in response to rumors that began swirling earlier in the day that all the Big Ten coaches were meeting to discuss perhaps starting a fall season sometime in November, if not earlier.

The Athletic‘s Nicole Auerbach tweeted someone she trusted had told her there was indeed some sort of conference call and that a start after Thanksgiving week was a possibility. She also said there were quite a few discussions about a new kickoff date and that some of the talk was still centering on a winter season, which would begin in early January.

Matt Brown, the publisher of Extra Points, posted on Twitter that anyone who was getting to excited about the talk of an October or November return for NCAA football were forgetting some important details.

Even if coaches from the Big Ten were talking on Friday, and were trying to come up with ways to formulate a schedule that could start before December, they aren’t the ones who have the final say.

He added the Big Ten athletic directors didn’t have the authority to make the final call either.

It was the university presidents that decided to postpone the 2020 season. Brown said it would have to be those same presidents reversing their decision.

He added the administrators don’t even have the absolute final call. With the conference spread out over so many states, it’s local governments that are going to have the most input on whether football can be played before 2021.

This isn’t the first time that rumors have circulated about the earlier decision getting circumvented or reversed. Not long after the postponement was first announced, there was talk that at least six schools were discussing how to play on their own. Those whispers never amounted to concrete movement in that direction.