Inside NUsletter Issue 6
Three Power Five leagues remain on track to play next month, while the Big Ten has ended up with a fall 2020 lawsuit season.
Good morning. Welcome to the sixth issue of the Inside NUsletter. We hope you enjoy it. If you like it, share it!
Today, we’ll once again highlight articles we published over the last week, the latest college football and basketball news, as well as some random things we found on the internet and wanted to share.
If you’ve come to expect anything from Inside NU, it’s that we don’t like to take ourselves too seriously. If it’s your first time reading, the Inside NUsletter should come off as informal but informative.
What we’ve been up to
The absence of college football in Evanston this fall will deprive fans and players of the pageantry and passion of 11 a.m. slugfests at Ryan Field. Simultaneously, the financial aspect of the postponement of the football season is also a big deal, to say the least. Northwestern’s spending on athletics is not public information since it is a private university, but in the wake of Stanford’s cutting 11 varsity sports, questions over NU’s assets and sustaining of revenue sports remain. Athletic director Jim Phillips, his executive staff and head coaches took voluntary pay cuts in May, but that is merely just a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of millions of dollars in revenue NU stands to lose with no football.
If there is football in the 2020-21 academic year, which remains a possibility (details here), the Wildcats will be without star left tackle Rashawn Slater, who last week opted out and declared for the NFL Draft. His departure leaves a hole in Northwestern’s offensive line. A few candidates will vie to replace the Texas native in the trenches, the most likely being redshirt junior Ethan Wiederkehr. But don’t rule out some shuffling along the front.
On that topic, the podcasting trio of William Karmin, Claire Kuwana, and Matt Albert discussed who else might opt out in this week’s edition of Pound the Talk. While more opt outs for NFL-bound players are inevitable, athletes may have the opportunity to stick around for another year. Last Friday, the NCAA Board of Governors passed a resolution granting an additional year of eligibility to all fall sports athletes, regardless of how much they play this academic year. The implications of this decision are not so clear cut: Besides this year’s freeze and seniors not counting toward the normal limit of 85 scholarships next year, schools have the choice to not match the scholarship amount currently given to players, which is what schools like Wisconsin did last spring.
While college seniors across the country must grapple with these developments, members of Northwestern’s next recruiting class also dealt with modifications, postponements and cancelations to their senior seasons. Brendan Sullivan, Caleb Tiernan, and Lawson Albright shared their thoughts and emotions as they pursue their final high school football seasons, noting they’ve had a high volume of communication with the NU coaching staff.
What happened this week
Oh, just another week in the college sports universe.
As the Big Ten continues to reel from its decision to postpone the 2020 football season, angry fans and parents have sought to vilify conference commissioner Kevin Warren as the new Darth Vader. But what was the freshman commish navigating, and did he really call the shots? Andy Staples of The Athletic delved into the complicated job of a conference commissioner, highlighting the dilemma Warren finds himself in. Warren’s decision-making process in the face of pressure from the media, coaches, players, parents and legislators was certainly a complicated one, but it should be viewed more that he failed with messaging while it was the majority of university presidents who voted to postpone the season.
The general confusion within the Big Ten community across the last few weeks came to head last week when a group of conference football parents gathered outside conference headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois, demanding answers and transparency from Warren. Randy Wade, father of Ohio State star defensive back Shaun Wade, organized the rally. The senior Wade expressed his desire for open dialogue with the Big Ten.
“We want to have a conversation. We want to play in the fall, but regardless of playing in the fall, we want to have a conversation before the spring, before next fall.”
Much as the parents of Big Ten athletes sought answers over the lack of transparency in the decision to postpone fall sports, the Nebraska has unsurprisingly taken it a step further. According to Sam Cooper of Yahoo! Sports, eight Husker football players are suing the Big Ten to restore the fall football season. The suit seeks to redress the “flawed and ambiguous decision-making process has caused and will continue to cause irreparable harm to the student-athletes.”
The players’ attorney, Mike Flood, said: “This lawsuit isn’t about money or damages, it’s about real-life relief. These student-athletes have followed all the precautions, underwent regular testing and lived according to the prescribed guidelines of the world-class experts at UNMC all for the chance to play football in September.”
According to The Athletic's legal analyst Daniel Wallach, the suit will probably not lead to anything significant due to the student-athletes’ contractual relationship with their institution rather than the conference. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how this saga plays out, and the B1G’s PR nightmare refuses to die out as the Pac-12, which made the same decision, watches on and sips cocktails.
Circling back to the NCAA Board of Governors’ resolution to grant an extra year of eligibility to fall athletes, Max Olson of The Athletic tracks the years-long implications of such a decision. Olson focuses on last year’s College Football Playoff participants Clemson, LSU, Oklahoma and Ohio State, and the intriguing possibility of them bringing back much of their top-tier talent for title challenges in 2021 and beyond. It’s a very informative read that provides some answers in the interim but also notes the many longer-term questions athletic directors will be tasked with figuring out over the coming months.
On the court, the NCAA hopes to avoid the football disaster and find an ideal start date amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. The NCAA is aiming for an opening day sometime after Thanksgiving, when most institutions will have already sent their students home until January, clearing the way for bubble-like environments. Per Jon Rothstein, November 25 and December 4 have emerged as the most attractive start dates. Matt Norlander of CBS Sports lays out the timelines for four different opening days. We may have more clarity next week on the basketball season than we do on the football season.
“A tentative meeting between the men's and women's oversight committees is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 31. It's hoped a clearer decision can be made at that meeting on a realistic start date for 2020-21. The NCAA is targeting the first week of September to settle on a model -- or models, if necessary -- to bring to the Division I Council.” - Matt Norlander
Some reports indicate that the schedule could begin with conference play and finish with a non-conference slate among teams in close proximity to each other.
With Iowa announcing the elimination of four athletic teams, how much money did it save the Hawkeyes? Did it make sense? Extra Points, an insightful newsletter we can’t recommend enough, takes a look.
In other legal news, UCLA filed a $200 million lawsuit against Under Armour. Northwestern’s current kit manufacturer wants out of a staggering 15-year, $280 million deal with the Westwood-based institution due to the financial implications of the pandemic, saying there’s a breach in the contract. It’s unclear if either party has the upper hand, and it’s likely to get ugly. Lawyers continue to be the only victors in college sports right now.
Finally, with college football actually happening very soon (see below) Stewart Mandel counted down the AP Top 25 college football games initially scheduled for a pandemic-less September. Spoiler alert: no Northwestern clash made it. HOWEVER, the Wildcats did receive one vote in the preseason AP Top 25 poll. So we’ll chalk that one up to a win.
🚨THERE IS COLLEGE FOOTBALL TOMORROW 🚨: The 2020 season kicks off tomorrow as FCS squads Austin Peay and Central Arkansas face off in the Guardian Credit Union Kickoff Classic at 8 p.m. CT. It doesn’t seem real, yet somehow it is!
Good Tweets
COVID outbreaks have hit reopened college campuses to varying degrees. After a few schools decided last week to revert to remote learning, some universities are attempting to weather the storm. Of course, Roll Tide.
Billable hours, folks.
Some B1G West content! It seems the feud for the 2019 Big Ten West Championship hasn’t settled down — or, B5Q and The Daily Gopher won’t let it. At least the 2018 B1G West Champion is undisputed.
Words don’t do this tweet or the work former NU basketball walk-on and current CNN reporter Omar Jimenez is doing justice. Related, with the tragedy in Kenosha and the sports world’s historic response to this latest example of racial injustice, you’d have liked to see the NU football program, with its Kenosha ties (the football team holds an annual mini camp there) do more than just stay silent.
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See you next week.
Written by Colin Kruse with help from Eli Karp.
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