The fate of the 2020 college football season now sits in the Big 12's hands.
With the Big Ten and the Pac-12 officially out, the Big 12 now stands as the swing vote in this election year. By all accounts, the SEC and ACC are prepared to hold the line -- so long as the Big 12 does, too. If the Big 12 bows out, the ACC will feel pressured to follow suit. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said today that it may be possible for the SEC to be the only Power 5 league going this year, but it may not be wise. If the SEC, ACC and Big 12 aren't playing, neither are the remaining Group of 5 leagues -- the American, the Sun Belt and Conference USA.
This is it. D-Day has arrived.
The fate of the season up to the Big 12, an arithmetically-challenged conference that nearly died on two separate occasions, whose membership stretches from Morgantown to Lubbock.
Big 12 presidents are scheduled for a 6 p.m. ET call. The most recent reporting indicates the 10-team conference is split into camps between canceling the season, playing as scheduled (which the conference doesn't currently have) or delaying deeper into the fall.
The internal dynamics of the conference have to come into play any time the Big 12 is discussed. The conference would have died a decade ago if not for Texas and, to a lesser extent, Oklahoma. Past precedent suggests those two voices will carry the loudest in the room, but Texas is operating under an interim president, and OU's has spent just a year on the job.
“There’s an increasing sentiment that we’ll play," a Big 12 source told Yahoo.
I reached out to a Big 12 staff source to gauge the feeling on his campus. "We are at practice today," the source said. "I hope that says something."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.