Nebraska coach Scott Frost said Monday that the Cornhuskers are open to playing college football in 2020 – even if it’s not in the Big Ten. Indeed, Scott said Nebraska will “look at any and all options” if the Big Ten cancels the season due to the coronavirus.
But would that make sense? Especially if Nebraska is unable to win a conference championship?
“Think of those games as inventory for those schools to access the money that they’re getting from the networks,” CBS Sports senior college football reporter Dennis Dodd said on Tiki & Tierney. “The networks call them inventory; they don’t even call them games. The Big 12 owes the networks 57 games. Well, with a 10-plus-one season, that would be 56, so they’re almost there. There’d have to be some special arrangement. . . . If they were willing to do it, you’d figure out the money. . . . Nebraska would be a rent-a-team for a year.”
But wouldn’t the NCAA prevent Nebraska from doing that?
“I don’t think the NCAA would have a say in it,” Dodd said. “Those conference affiliations are agreements between those schools and the networks that broadcast their games. I don’t think the NCAA has anything to do with conference affiliation. . . . The NCAA didn’t have to approve Notre Dame [playing an ACC schedule]. That’s why the Power Five is the Power Five. They want to control their fate. The only conference affiliation that I know of is that you have to have six teams in a division to play a conference championship game, and that doesn’t come into play here.”