CINCINNATI — An already upended college football season was rocked yet again on Thursday when The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach broke news that the Big Ten was moving to eliminate its non-conference matchups and play a conference-only schedule. The ramifications throughout college football will no doubt be massive, but the most immediate impact for the Bearcats was the cancellation of their Sept. 26 game against Nebraska.
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“Today’s news out of the Big Ten Conference was disappointing,” UC Athletic Director John Cunningham said in a statement. “We were looking forward to the opportunity of playing at Nebraska. We are preparing for the 2020 season and will continue to work with leadership from the university and American Athletic Conference to best position ourselves.”
So what comes next for the Bearcats specifically? Let’s take a stab at the most pressing questions facing UC in the wake of the Big Ten’s decision, and I’ll offer my potential answers.
What does this mean for the home-and-home series with Nebraska?
The Bearcats were originally scheduled to play in Lincoln on the first leg of a home-and-home that is slated to return to Nippert Stadium on Sept. 13, 2025.
Best guess: The contract between the two sides states that the visiting team be paid $400,000, meaning the Bearcats would have been paid five years before returning the favor. It also states that the agreement is void “in the event it becomes impossible to play the game by reason of disaster, fire, hurricane, tropical storm, flood, earthquake, war, act of terrorism, invasion, hostilities, rebellion, insurrection, confiscation by order of government, military public authority, or prohibitive or injunctive orders of any competent judicial or governmental authority.”
As many bases as that would seem to cover (insurrection!), it doesn’t explicitly use the word “pandemic” for the reason of cancellation. Meaning if Nebraska backs out of the deal, a good lawyer could make a reasonable argument for why the Bearcats should be owed the $1.5-million penalty stipulated in the contract. It’s also possible that the Big 10 would step in and pay any penalties incurred by its conference-only decision, though that seems more likely in the case of one-off guarantee games.
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At the risk of this somehow becoming outdated the moment you finish reading it, I do think it’s possible Nebraska and Cincinnati would look to reschedule the 2020 game for a later date and keep the 2025 game at Nippert on the books. As I tweeted in the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s announcement, Nebraska currently has non-conference openings in 2024 and 2027, and two in 2029. The Bearcats have openings in those seasons as well, and though any of the three scenarios would require them to shuffle other games around, I’m sure that’s something UC would make an effort to do. Especially considering that Cunningham grew up in Lincoln going to games in Memorial Stadium, and later graduated from Nebraska Law.
The Cornhuskers have home-and-homes scheduled with Oklahoma, Colorado, Tennessee, Arizona and Oklahoma State through 2035. The rest of their non-conference bookings are all Group of 5 or FCS guarantee games. Maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t see why they’d be against rescheduling UC in an already open spot to keep the home-and-home on the books — unless COVID-19 forces all non-conference games to be more regionally conscious.
Considering that all of these contracts across college football use slightly different wording and are carried out by different entities, parsing the cancellation clauses from a legal perspective is going to be an absolute mess. This seems like a situation in which that could be easily avoided.
What does this mean for the rest of UC’s non-conference schedule?
The Bearcats are scheduled to host Austin Peay on Sept. 3, Western Michigan on Sept. 11, and then take a short trip to play Miami University in Oxford on Sept. 19.
Best guess: Frankly, amid existing uncertainty and the domino effect the Big Ten’s decision is likely to have, picking up an additional non-conference game to replace Nebraska seems highly unlikely, and probably irresponsible.
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It doesn’t make a ton of sense for UC to play an FCS opponent in what would undoubtedly be an empty stadium, either. But considering they are contracted to pay Austin Peay $390,000 for the game — or $400,000 if they fail to show for it — they may run into the same legal thicket mentioned above. Short of a similar conference-wide, conference-only decision, Cincinnati would have to reasonably argue that a disparity in testing and quarantining protocols raises legitimate health concerns about playing AP. Otherwise, an athletic department that is already in the midst of staff furloughs and pay cuts and staring down further financial complications probably can’t afford to risk paying a $400,000 penalty.
This makes the other two games against Mid-American Conference opponents really interesting. I spoke with Miami Athletic Director David Sayler Thursday regarding the implications all of this could have on the MAC, considering how heavily that league relies on money from guarantee games against the P5, and comparatively, how little they rely on money from television rights. He took a hard stance on why pushing the season to spring should be considered as a more legitimate option, first and foremost for safety reasons. But also because of his belief that it buys time to gather information about the virus, and in turn offers better odds of playing more games — and potentially having more fans at those games.
“The biggest determining factor for us is that we need to play games. If we play games, we think we can generate revenue,” Sayler said. “Maybe in the spring we can play a couple less games but have 80 percent capacity, that certainly would be a big chunk of revenue we could make up for right there. Even if we lost (our guarantee game with Pittsburgh), I’d be more interested in trying to find ways to have bigger crowds in the spring.”
As big a disparity as there is between the AAC and the P5 in terms of TV money, the American is still significantly ahead of the rest of the G5 in that department as well. Under the league’s new 12-year deal with ESPN — which would pay in the neighborhood of $6 million per school under normal circ*mstances — it may well be worth it for the AAC to play in front of limited capacity or even empty stadiums if it means they could recoup most or all of the TV money. That may not be the case for the MAC and the rest of the G5, however.
What value does Miami get from hosting the Bearcats in an empty stadium this September? Probably not enough to justify it. Sayler and Cunningham have had one conversation in recent weeks about how comfortable either party was with the other’s approach from a health and safety standpoint, but the Big Ten completely recalibrated that discussion on Thursday.
That same question of value applies to UC hosting Western Michigan. The G5 could certainly attempt to keep its non-conference home-and-homes intact, even without most or all of the P5 playing outside their own league. But at that point, what is really being gained? Once you start to swish this one around, it has the tasting notes of a first step toward all FBS schools ultimately moving to a conference-only schedule.
What would an AAC conference-only schedule look like for UC?
The 11 league members are currently slated to play an eight-game, division-less conference schedule, capped with a title game between the top two teams.
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Best guess: From a geographical and travel perspective, the American might benefit the least from a conference-only schedule. None of the leagues are as regional as they once were, but there’s still a solid number of bus-able road trips within most of them. Cincinnati’s nearest conference opponent is Memphis, seven-plus hours and a time-zone away by land. Most others are in a similar footprint.
So while the AAC wouldn’t gain much of anything on that front, it would have the solace of a cohesive testing plan and consolidated leadership, which has been glaringly absent within college sports throughout the pandemic. And if the American did go conference-only, it could either keep the eight-game schedule as-is, or reshuffle the decks and try for a 10-game round-robin. In a bowl system that maintains any semblance of normalcy, the league would have as good a chance as always at landing the G5 New Year’s Six bid, too. The chief unknown in this scenario, however, is the prospects of completing a full 8- or 10-game schedule this fall.
What are the reasons for moving to spring?
There has been a growing sentiment in some sectors to move the season to spring —which really means late winter — in hopes that more time, more information, and (hopefully) better numbers would make pulling off a safe and recognizable season a more realistic proposition. (Heck, maybe even a vaccine!)
Best guess: As much as people like Sayler are pushing for it on the merits of safety and added runway, it still feels like an anathema for the power conferences, whether due to logistical hurdles, the fear of losing out on all that TV money, or the possibility of their top prospects sitting out with NFL careers on the horizon. That last part could potentially impact UC as well. James Wiggins? James Smith? James Hudson? (Good time to be named James for the Bearcats.)
I really don’t know on this one, but as things stand today, even pulling off a shortened, conference-only schedule in the fall seems like an impossibility. The question then becomes if it’s worth risking a stop-and-restart situation, which might be the only scenario in all of this that has universal disapproval. At the very least, attempting a spring season is becoming a more plausible option with each passing day.
(Photo: Courtesy of Cincinnati Bearcats Athletics)
Justin Williams covers college football and basketball for The Athletic. He was previously a beat reporter covering the Cincinnati Bearcats, and prior to that he worked as a senior editor for Cincinnati Magazine. Follow Justin on Twitter/X @williams_justin Follow Justin on Twitter @williams_justin
