Penn State’s Sandy Barbour: It is ‘unclear’ whether Big Ten took a vote on postponing football season
Much of the criticism Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren and the conference’s university presidents and athletic directors have received in the week following the decision to postpone the fall 2020 college football season has been regarding a lack of clarity about how and why that conclusion was reached.
Penn State Athletic Director Sandy Barbour didn’t help matters Monday when she spoke to reporters on a Zoom conference call. Barbour, who said she was not on the Aug. 11 Zoom meeting where the university presidents and chancellors decided the Big Ten would cancel fall football, said she doesn’t know whether a formal vote took place.
“It is unclear to me whether or not there was a vote,” Barbour said. “Nobody’s ever told me there was. So I just don’t know whether there actually was a vote by the chancellors and presidents.”
After releasing a conference-only schedule on Aug. 5, it took just six days for the Big Ten to change course and postpone the fall football season. Several reports from last week state that Big Ten presidents voted on the proposal on Aug. 11, the same day of the conference’s announcement.
Warren, in an appearance on the Big Ten Network shortly after the announcement, would not acknowledge whether or not there was a unanimous vote to cancel the fall season.
“I would rather not have a detailed discussion about if it was unanimous or not unanimous,” he said. “This is a decision that was made on a collective basis.”
The lack of transparency has left coaches, players and players’ parents in search of answers. There’s also been little explanation of the medical information that was presented to Big Ten presidents and eligibility matters.
In a letter published Saturday, the Penn State Football Parents Association requested that Warren and Penn State President Eric Barron provide “a clear presentation of the medical information” used by the Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee in making their decision. They also asked for a Zoom meeting with parents to get answers to questions about player eligibility — in particular, eligibility of fifth-year seniors.
If Penn State doesn’t have a spring season, athletes will have another season of eligibility. But if the Big Ten does play in the spring, what constitutes a season of eligibility will depend on an NCAA vote. Barbour admitted figuring out the financial aid aspect of the situation — whether or not Penn State can afford to provide another semester’s worth of financial aid to fall sport athletes — will be “a little bit more challenging.”
Head coach James Franklin made an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up” on the morning of Aug. 11 to express his concerns with unanswered questions that would arise if the Big Ten canceled the fall college football season.
“Why would we cancel the season right now when we don’t have all the information and we don’t have all the answers?” Franklin said, just hours before the conference announced its decision to not play in the fall.
Franklin is now on a committee of Big Ten head coaches and athletic directors trying to help come up with a concept for a potential spring season, Barbour said.
But the head coach’s plea to decision-makers last week served as an indication that not everyone in the conference was on the same page. Now, days after the Big Ten declared it wouldn’t play football this fall, the players and players’ parents speaking out through letters and petitions have made it clear they’re looking for answers from Big Ten leadership.
Barbour’s Zoom conference on Monday didn’t provide many.
“It’s unclear to me whether there was ever a vote or not,” Barbour said. “But it is clear to me that Penn State and Eric Barron, both on our campus and then as he took his thoughts into the Big Ten and into the various conversations that they had, explored every option to play.”
