Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC are moving to Conference-only games
And so the dominos continue to fall.
According to multiple media sources, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 have all decided that they will play a nine-game conference-only season
It is an effort to cut down the season and make it work, as well as give schools some wiggle-room if there an outbreak of COVID-19 on teams and campuses.
For the SEC a bunch of non-conference games will be affected, including (sadly), Clemson vs South Carolina, Georgia vs Georgia Tech, Louisville vs Kentucky and Florida State vs Florida.
Notre Dame have been told that the ACC will accommodate Notre Dame in its own schedule.
For the Big Ten the biggest match-ups being lost are Notre Dame’s game with Wisconsin, Penn State’s trip to Virginia Tech, and a monster of a game between Ohio State and Oregon.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is expected to announce that it too will go for a conference-only schedule, which will meant that there will be no Alabama vs USC game if that works out, as well as no USC vs Notre Dame.
The upshot is the with these incomplete schedules, it’s certain that the Big XII and SEC will follow suit.
What happens next is fascinating. Some of the schools play an 8 game conference schedule and other ones play nine. I suspect that it will go to nine, which means that SEC teams will add another game onto their schedules…..something that Nick Saban has been campaigning for for ages.