The 2019-2020 college football season had a lot of unanswered questions heading into the year, including which conferences would play and how long the other conferences would postpone their season for. 

As of the first month of the season, only six of the 10 FBS conferences were playing games, three power five (SEC, ACC, & Big 12),  and three group of five (Sun Belt, AAC, & Conference USA). It seemed that the College Football Playoff and bowl games would be thinner than usual with the PAC 12 and Big 10 postponing their seasons until the spring. 

That all changed on Sept. 16 when the Big 10 conference announced that they would reverse their decision to postpone their season until 2021 and then changed the start of the season to the end of October. 

The conference could promise to do daily testing for athletes, but the main catalyst for the reversal might have been pressure from fans, media, parents, players, and coaches. This action sparked the remaining three conferences to reverse their postponements as well with the MAC starting their season at the end of October and the PAC 12 and MWC at the start of November. 

“The main elements that need to be choreographed are the timing and selection of bowl games and the playoffs. Teams that started playing earlier argue that they should not wait for late-starting conferences for the bowl games and playoffs,” explained Phil Magbanua, former director of football and recruiting operations at UCLA, in an email. 

He added, “That is a valid argument because the players will either have to pause gameplay for a significant time, or play in an extra long season, which both will cause injuries. The teams that delayed start have a valid argument that not delaying the post-season is taking away opportunities for the programs and players that were looking out for their peoples’ health.” 

“The downside is that the players, especially players in their last year of eligibility, are only guaranteed seven games,” Athletic Director Jay’Sen Morris ’07 elucidated. “That could have an impact on players who want to try and play in the NFL and were looking forward to this year being a chance to get more film.”