Mark Emmert says NCAA won't force conferences to resume sports at the same time
As we continue to face uncertain times (a popular phrase nowadays) amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains to be seen when sports can return to our lives.
Other countries have started up sports (like the Korean Baseball Organization), but the U.S. still has some work to do before sports return, it seems.
On Tuesday, NCAA president Mark Emmert made some interesting comments to ESPN, saying the NCAA won’t mandate that conferences all resume sports at the same time:
“Normally there’s an agreed upon start date for every sport, every season,” Emmert told ESPN, “but under these circumstances, now that’s all been derailed by the pandemic. It won’t be the conferences that can do that, either. It will be the local and state health officials that say whether or not you can open and play football with fans.
“We already saw the Oregon governor offering her views on what’s likely to happen in September. The Pac-12 can say, ‘Gee, we’d all like to open up on this date,’ but whether or not you can is going to be ultimately up to the state and local health officials and the campus itself making a decision whether or not they want to go forward.
“These are localized decisions. Local campuses have to decide are we opening up and are we bringing students back to play sports. The NCAA doesn’t mandate that, nor should it. The schools themselves have to make those choices.”
With all that said, that leaves a lot of wiggle room for some conferences to get things going again while others wait.
What happens next? We should find out over the summer.