Oregon Football is back, again. The Pac-12 announced that will resume football operations with a seven-game schedule set to start in November.
A week after the Big Ten made their decision to return to the field, the Pac-12 conference once again followed in their footsteps. The Conference of Champions CEO Group on Thursday said football, as well as basketball, will return in 2020. There were potential plans to push football back to 2021.
Each team will play five divisional opponents, and also a division crossover game in the shortened season. These will happen before the Pac-12 Championship game set for December 18th. It is not known if the reduced slate of games will keep the conference relevant enough to be part of the College Football Playoff race.
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With the regular season already started for other teams and the polls having removed the Pac-12 from rankings, it will be a rough climb back into any Top 25 ranking two months into the season and also competing with the rest of college football that is playing as well as the Big Ten who is set to start gameplay next month.
While the State of Oregon has given permission to both Oregon and Oregon State to resume practices with their respective COVID-19 guidelines, it is not known if they have permission to resume full-on football operations. I expect this is being ironed out in the coming days and may be the reason as to why we do not actually have the abbreviated Pac-12 schedule for 2020 yet.
I also expect the schedule to look similar to last month with earlier games being played closer to home. Fall Camp can begin on October 20th, which gives strength and conditioning coaches a few more weeks to get players prepared for an abbreviated season set to start on November 7th.