Stanford, Cal Football: Pac-12 will only play conference games this season
By Justin Fried
The Pac-12 has officially announced that they will only be playing in-conference games this season.
The Pac-12 has followed the lead of the Big Ten and announced that it would play a conference-only schedule for all sports this fall officially altering the schedules for the Stanford and Cal football programs.
Pac-12 officially voted to do so on Friday in a virtual meeting of athletic directors, university presidents, and conference officials. This decision was determined the same day as the Big Ten’s decision was reached.
This means that both Stanford and Cal will miss out on their respective out-of-conference games. That includes Stanford’s season opener against Williams & Mary as well as their annual showdown with Notre Dame scheduled for mid-October in South Bend, Indiana.
As for Cal, they too will miss out on their season opener that was scheduled to be played against UNLV in the Las Vegas Raiders‘ brand new Allegiant Stadium on August 29th. They will also lose a home game against Cal Poly and Big 12 powerhouse TCU.
The ACC is expected to reach a similar decision in the coming days leaving the SEC and Big 12 little choice but to do the same. It’s highly likely that each conference is only playing an in-conference schedule this season.
That is, if there even is a college football season.
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The Stanford and Cal football programs might not even be able to play in 2020.
Growing concerns about whether or not college football can be played in the fall have risen to the point of near panic amongst some.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey recently stated that his concerns about the upcoming season are “high to very high” and he insisted that the college football world is “running out of time to correct and get things right.”
So while this seems like a necessary step, could it be more of a last-ditch effort to save a season that almost seems hopeless at this point? Perhaps, or perhaps there is still hope that a season could actually be salvaged.
Regardless, there is reasonable optimism for both the Stanford and Cal football programs if a 2020 season is played. And it would be a shame to see all of that optimism go down the drain.
Unfortunately, that’s the world we may be living in.
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For now, the Pac-12 is set to play only conference games in 2020. But it remains to be seen if there actually is a 2020 season to be played.