With two-fifths of the Power Five not playing college football this fall – the Big Ten and Pac-12 have postponed fall sports with hopes of playing in the spring – the 2020 season looks a whole lot different than it did just a couple of days ago.
Well, more changes are likely coming. In fact, CBS Sports Network college football analyst Aaron Taylor does not believe the sport will crown a national champion this season.
“No, and furthermore, we’re not going to have a season,” Taylor said on Tiki & Tierney. “I think where we’re going to end up with the Big 12, the ACC and the SEC – unfortunately and regrettably – is the same exact spot that the Big Ten and the Pac-12 [found] themselves in [Tuesday] when they shut it down. They were first, but the dominoes are falling. . . . At the end of the day, when you get into the cage with the gorilla, it’s the gorilla that decides when the dance is over. COVID-19 is the gorilla, and nothing is going to change in the next six weeks.”
Tiki Barber took the NCAA to task Tuesday for its lack of COVID-19 leadership. Taylor did the same Wednesday.
“It’s a disaster – and it’s been exposed in the most embarrassing and damning ways possible,” Taylor said. “The kicking the can down the road, the passing the buck – nobody is willing to step up and make the tough decisions. Then the board of directors kicks it back to the board of trustees and it’s this pass the buck. At the end of the day, the NCAA will come out and say, ‘Hey, we fully support our member institutions for the decisions that they made, but those were theirs in and of themselves, and we have no liability or say-so in it.’
“So yeah, some sort of retooling of the oversight in collegiate athletics is long overdue,” Taylor continued. “The leadership that has been necessary, that has been missing, is what’s created this damn problem in the first place – and if we had had that in the beginning, we may not find ourselves on the brink of losing college football in totality in 2020.”