A group of about twenty parents of Big Ten athletes gathered outside the conference headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois on Friday to demand answers from commissioner Kevin Warren regarding the decision to postpone the fall college football season. The protest failed to account for the fact that Warren and his staff aren’t at headquarters; they’re working remotely due to the pandemic, which is part of why the season was postponed in the first place, according to USA Today.
Randy Wade, father of Ohio State Buckeyes cornerback Shaun Wade, spoke to reporters during the protest, saying the group mostly wanted a conversation with Warren:
“The reason we’re here is that we want to have conversations. It’s simple. We want to play in the fall, but regardless of the fall, we want to have conversations in the spring.”
Randy Wade
The main concern for the parents is that their children are being denied the chance to play despite following the NCAA’s prevention protocols. Wade said that it was unfair that they were being denied football without having any control in the decision.
The Big Ten decided last week to cancel all fall sports due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, pointing towards the physical and mental well-being of their student-athletes as the driving force towards the decision. The current plan is to have the football season in the spring, when the pandemic might be more contained than it is now.
Andrea Tate, mother of Buckeyes cornerback Sevyn Banks, pointed to the ACC and SEC, which have not cancelled their seasons yet, as a reason for the Big Ten to carry on with the fall season:
You can’t tell us that the Big Ten can’t get it together, that the ACC can get it together, that the SEC can get it together. The Big Ten can do the same.
Andrea Tate
That reasoning assumes that those two conferences will, in fact, go on with the fall seasons. Though they plan to as of now, there are Power Five athletic directors who believe that the cancellation of seasons across the country will eventually lead to a total shutdown of college football this fall.
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