The Pac-12 CEO group, made up of one president or chancellor from each of the conference’s 12 universities, will meet Tuesday and is expected to discuss and vote on how to proceed with the 2020 football season, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN.
The growing sense around the conference is that it is highly unlikely the Pac-12 will move forward with a fall season amid concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic and will look to playing in the spring, if possible, sources said. An official decision will not come prior to Tuesday’s meeting.
Pac-12 athletic directors were provided updates from the conference’s medical advisory committee during a call Sunday and similar information will be provided to the CEO group Tuesday.
The CEO group is expected to be briefed on growing concern about myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle often caused by a viral infection that has been linked closely to COVID-19, sources said. Myocarditis “comes on suddenly and often with significant severity, resulting in an exceptionally high risk of death caused by cardiogenic shock (the heart’s inability to pump enough blood), fatal arrhythmias (abnormal heartbeats) and multiorgan failure,” according to the American Heart Association.
How the Pac-12 moves forward will ultimately be determined by a combination of several, factors, which include how its peer conferences in the Power 5 — most notably the Big Ten — decide to act.
“It’s naïve to say these decisions don’t take into account what’s going on elsewhere in the country to some degree,” a conference source said.
Late Sunday night, some of the biggest stars in college football voiced their desire to play the 2020 fall season. That group, which included representatives from the Pac12’s #WeAreUnited unity group, asked for universally-mandated health and safety procedures related to COVID-19 for all NCAA conferences, the ability for players to opt out of the season due to safety concerns and keep their eligibility, and to “ultimately create a college football players association.”
Stanford defensive end Dylan Boles told ESPN’s Dan Murphy that he believes the pandemic and protests against racial injustice this summer created a situation where more players felt the need to speak up. Players from the Pac-12 group asked commissioner Larry Scott on Thursday if they could have legal representation in future meetings. However, Scott said that if the players were to bring representation, they would be required to communicate with lawyers from the Pac-12.