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This year of college football is unlike any other. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, each conference has decided on its own action plan on how best to play the 2020 season.
While the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 conferences started playing in September, the Big Ten waited until the end of October, and the Pac-12 waited until early November to play. It has sparked a lot of talk and debate around the Ohio State’s No.4 ranking in college football playoffs, having only played five games so far.
In a recent interview, the Alabama coach Nick saban made a suggestion so that all Power 5 conferences can work together more easily.
“One of the things that I think this year has proven more than anything else is that we should have a commissioner for college football, at least for the Power 5 conferences, because all of these conferences have set different rules on how we should play the season, ” Saban said.
The conferences also approached the length of the season and non-conference opponents differently. While the ACC and the Big 12 allowed teams to play a non-conference opponent, the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 stuck to a conference-only schedule.
These differences between the conferences led to an exchange of words between two high-level commissioners.
Two weeks ago, the ACC announced it would close the regular season at nine games for the conference title contenders Notre Dame and Clemson. This secured a Clemson-Notre Dame rematch in the ACC Championship game with Clemson winning over Virginia Tech on December 5.
A day later, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey criticized the ACC for canceling games. Sankey made his comments in an interview with CBS Sports that was published Wednesday.
“I was surprised to see the announcement,” Sankey told CBS Sports. “This raises a question: if their two top-ranked teams were, for example, [ranked] five and six in the CFP ranking, would this decision have been taken? “
In an interview with ESPN on Monday, ACC Commissioner John Swofford defended the conference’s decision to cancel some of the regular season games last weekend.
“I don’t think there is anyone else that I know of who has played more games than Clemson and Notre Dame, and certainly no more games than the ACC, so that feels pretty hollow to me,” Swofford told ESPN. “We’re looking at our league. We don’t care much about other leagues. We’re looking at what we think is appropriate and fair for the ACC. It’s not even a defense; it’s just an explanation because both teams playing in our championship game do not need to defend themselves in any way.
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“We’re in a pandemic. People are doing their best to play as many games as possible and give players the chance to get through a season and end it healthy. I think it’s pretty obvious we’ve had lucky enough to do that at CAC as well as anyone in the country. There are some pretty important things going on out there in the world, and worrying or trying to make it a problem is quite disappointing. “
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