Pac-12 still on track to resume play in October

The Pac-12 football season could still return this fall despite the conference presidents delaying their vote on a return-to-play schedule last week.

According to reports and sources from Mercury News’ Jon Wilner, the conference is still expecting the CEO approval around September 24 and the conference’s presidents to vote to allow their athletes to return to play as early as Halloween.

The trouble there, however, is that the California Four and the Oregon Two will be far behind the rest of the conference as California and Oregon have not permitted full fledge practices for their schools.

Yet, according to Wilner, the conference has a plan and it’s a ‘good plan’ at that.

The preferred start date at this point is still October 31 despite local health restrictions not allowing the proper time for practices to resume in California and Oregon.

It is said that the Pac-12’s medical advisory group believes that six weeks is ideal as two weeks of ‘ramp-up time’ and then four weeks of full-contact practices and workouts would be sufficient to get the teams ready to play.

While we await news in both California and Oregon, and news especially from California Governor Gavin Newsom, whom the USC Trojans players called out specifically, the fact also remains that how a season schedule would work out with an October 31 return to play is still unclear.

You’d have to think that at this point, the only reason to rush back into a fall season is to protect the Rose Bowl and also perhaps cause more College Football Playoff chaos, which would mean they’d have to squeeze as many games in as possible to be in contention.

We can still look forward to games to begin around Halloween, though. And that’s at least good news.