PSU AD Sandy Barbour said it remains unclear to her whether there was actually a formal vote or not by the Big Ten presidents and chancellors.
https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/1295426172034195463
So there may or may not have been a vote...
August 17th, 2020 at 2:42 PM ^
If you have any connection to the B1G you should leave as fast as you can and never look back.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:32 PM ^
Darryl, I think your account got nuked...
August 17th, 2020 at 3:45 PM ^
Did you know that Bigfoot in Bolivia is called Chupacabra??
August 17th, 2020 at 7:04 PM ^
No no no, sorry Chupacabra is a Mexican thing only amigo. Don´t know if the Bolivians have their own version.
August 17th, 2020 at 8:05 PM ^
Lo siento, mi amigo
August 17th, 2020 at 8:41 PM ^
C'mon, get some cryptid education. Bigfoots are simians like us. Chupacabras are some kind of lower mammal life form, not as low as a marsupial, but down there with bats, vampire bat/dog chimeras and the like.
August 17th, 2020 at 8:26 PM ^
Get a life
August 17th, 2020 at 2:47 PM ^
This is making MSU's coaching search look well-organized.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:09 PM ^
That's why Kevin Warren's non-answer BTN interview was so bad -- he gave out little information, so in the place of that, people are casting about for what actually did happen & why it happened.
Hell, the SWAC announced their Spring football schedule today. The B1G could have taken some steam out of this "We need to play now!" movement if people a) understood the B1G's decision making process and b) what the next steps were (e.g., "While we don't know the exact schedule, the Presidents and our medical staff decided on an 8-game Spring 2021 schedule, subject to further input from our coaches, as there are safety issues beyond COVID, and we don't want our student-athletes to have too many hits in one calendar year..").
Instead, we have an opaque "We just decided what was best for the kids this fall" stuff and "We'll start thinking about the spring schedule in a month or three" which (understandably) makes it seem like no football at all will happen in the B1G for 2020-2021.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:50 PM ^
This is one of those things that no one will ever know the truth about.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:53 PM ^
But there will be numerous articles and books over the next 50 years that will purport to knowing exactly what happened.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:56 PM ^
like anyone will still care.
August 17th, 2020 at 4:21 PM ^
I heard it's because Lloyd didn't support Rich Rod
August 17th, 2020 at 2:59 PM ^
Yep, it's one of those things where people intentionally "forget" the details, lest it be held against them in the future.
Even 30 years later, you still see varying reports as to which Presidents cast the "no" votes on Penn State expansion. All anyone seems to acknowledge is that the vote was 7-3.
August 17th, 2020 at 4:28 PM ^
Minnesota, Michigan and Indiana, no?
August 18th, 2020 at 1:36 AM ^
See - that's NOT the 3 I think it is. I do agree as regards IU and Michigan.
MSU President DiBaggio spoke at an MSU BOT meeting on June 8, 1990 and he basically said this: "Penn State will be joining the conference, but the Council of Big Ten Presidents have decided not to share out any details as regards the deliberations."
30 years out, it doesn't really matter. But that sounds quite a bit like the Minnesota President in 2020. Transparency hasn't really become better over all those years.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:52 PM ^
The season is on! The season is cancelled! The season is postponed!
We voted and it was 12-2. Nope, it was 8-6. Nope, there was no vote.
We are apparently living at a moment in history where reasoned, rational, organized decision making is considered a bad thing.
I am leaning towards dictatorship. Just as long as it's not the current guy... ;-)
August 17th, 2020 at 2:58 PM ^
"I am leaning towards dictatorship."
If having experience as a dictator would be a prerequisite, why, we have an ideal candidate who posts to this board on the regular.
Vlad Putin...COME ON DOWN!!
Seriously though, the only person I would ever trust as a dictator is the man in the mirror. And he would fold up like a cheap valise at the first sign of trouble.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:52 PM ^
It kinda important to also see and read the second of these two Nicole Auerbach tweets in order to get a more complete perspective:
https://twitter.com/NicoleAuerbach/status/1295429757593624579?s=09
... keeping in mind it was the University Presidents, not the ADs, who made the decision to postpone B1G fall sports.
Maybe Sandy Barbour should have first asked the PSU President.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:18 PM ^
What? A chain of command in business you say? That does not fit the rabble rousing intent of post.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:34 PM ^
Exactly. The PSU AD should be made to explain herself.
August 17th, 2020 at 7:16 PM ^
Just reading the title of the post and my first thought was this will look worse for the PSU AD than the Big Ten.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:54 PM ^
Tinfoil hot take time-
This is the B1G’s escape valve to not pay any of the athletes. A move to deemphasize sports and go to a Division III model like ex-member Chicago did many years ago. Hell, maybe even join them. The academia side of the B1G fancies itself right up there with the Ivy League and there is a long-standing legend that an open offer exists for Chicago to rejoin.
Blasphemous right? Well, Jim Delany mentioned this D3 model idea once.
August 17th, 2020 at 6:52 PM ^
Well, you weren't lying about the tinfoil hot take part.
August 17th, 2020 at 11:15 PM ^
I’d be fine with that to be honest.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:55 PM ^
I'm fairly certain if a president/chancellor didn't vote, they'd probably remember that.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:56 PM ^
Unless we’re talking about osu’s president of course. Memory loss is a problem down there.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:57 PM ^
So is this an admission that the AD doesn't have a seat at the table at PSU when they make real decisions, or the AD actively undermining the larger university to look like the AD is on the sports/fans/players side?
August 17th, 2020 at 2:59 PM ^
This is totally stupid. The ADs should shut up about stuff they didn't participate in and thus don't know about. Just say "I was just an adviser to my boss -- I not in the meeting, and the decision was ultimately up to the B1G Presidents, so they could tell you the exact process."
The fact is all of the schools, except for Nebraska (which eventually came around) so quickly sent out supportive statements after the decision was announced shows the large majority ruled. If Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc had all wanted a fall season -- there would be one. There isn't.
That said, Kevin Warren could have prevented all of this "vote" reporting (e.g., was it 8-6? 12-2? 7-4-3?) by making the decision process & any results clear in his BTN interview. But he didn't. He decided to go with platitudes and no specifics. Typical chicken-shit administrator stuff.
So now we have "well, that's what I heard!" type stuff that satisfies no one that this was done with careful thought and a rational process. Great job, everyone.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:29 PM ^
Why is Kevin Warren getting all the heat...the vote wasn’t up to him! He couldn’t go on television and say “The vote was 11-3, and Nebraska, Iowa and Purdue voted to play.” That puts heat on those schools who either voted for it or not unnecessarily. He got on TV and gave the reasons on why the season was cancelled...it’s up for the public at-large to come to grips with it.
August 17th, 2020 at 6:05 PM ^
Because he's the guy in charge of all B1G sports, so blame comes with the territory. If the other conferences were bailing now, he would be drinking champagne toasts to his brilliance. He could have tempered the response, though, by being more transparent and open with the press. As Rob Pollard has been saying, he brought a lot of this on himself...
August 17th, 2020 at 6:42 PM ^
Agreed. I just don't understand the cloud of secrecy that seems to surround this decision.
August 17th, 2020 at 7:58 PM ^
I said the same thing at the time that it wasn't Warren's call, but his interview with BTN was still terrible. He was asked 3 times what had changed in 6 days (since the conference only schedule was released), and he dodged the question 3 times. It was a fair and appropriate question.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:05 PM ^
Pass the buck. No leadership during this pandemic from the highest levels of government, to local government, to institutional leaders.
If university presidents made this vote, they should come out and say so. They leagues should release info on how and why they came to their final decisions, and how they conducted these votes.
I am in the 'season should be cancelled camp', but no matter the decisions pushed for and made by respective teams and leagues, leadership requires transparency - whatever the vote was and who made it.
Nobody wants to take any heat and own up to the tough decisions these days - half-ass measures and lack of accountability are a major reason we can't get a handle on this thing.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:06 PM ^
??♂️ There was a vote...people are just in CYA mode for the parents/public.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:28 PM ^
She should be relieved of her duties.
You can blame whoever you want but for an AD to say what she said is a poor reflection on her more than anyone.
You mean to tell me she didn't think to talk to her president or chancellor for specifics.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:36 PM ^
Correct. I'd be surprised if she was not required to sign a social media governance policy where she could be fired immediately for such a comment that was not in the best interest of the university. Of course it is PSU.
August 17th, 2020 at 8:48 PM ^
She probably asked, but was given a vague answer or ignored. I can honestly believe she doesn't know even though she asked.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:30 PM ^
I find it rather amusing that determining the status / existence of this vote is apparently extremely difficult, but this would be consistent with how the conference likes to present itself to the public, as something vague and unclear that may have done something.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:38 PM ^
https://twitter.com/JeffWaldFox9/status/1295434468069724162
"University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel said last week she wouldn't call it a vote per se. She called it, "a deliberative process where we came to a decision together" and supported the decision to postpone the season."
Sure looks like they put a lot of effort into not taking a vote.
At the end of a deliberative process, how do you know you have consensus without a vote?
August 17th, 2020 at 3:57 PM ^
You say "it sounds like the decision is to move ahead with fall sports and postpone to the spring." When that is followed by crickets, it's safe to say there is a consensus even if there was no formal vote. This is very common in the business world.
We often like to talk about conferences having to take a vote to make a decision, but that is often in cases like expansion where there are actual bylaws in place to govern decision making. That need not always be the case. To the extent there are reports of the big ten voting, it seems likely that those were initial or intermediate votes to judge where the conference was at during deliberations.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:57 PM ^
Because I'm a University President I'm paid to make this call. I value your collaborative feedback and thoughtful recommendation and this is my decision. This how it works.
This ain't your local Moose Lodge dude.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:40 PM ^
I have only one question
HOW FUCKING INCOMPETENT IS EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN A LEADERSHIP POSITION IN THIS COUNTRY?
August 17th, 2020 at 3:55 PM ^
I don't think any of us can possibly grok just how hard it is for the conference brass to wrap their arms around something that is proliferating so rapidly and literally mutating as we speak.
That said, it really is impressive how they've taken an already impossibly difficult task and made it tenfold worse by not controlling their narrative in any kind of coherent form.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:41 PM ^
If that were true Scotty Frost would have led with this during his rant/bitchfest.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:46 PM ^
All this tidbit of news does is add more fuel to the firestorm. Add to that the increasing numbers of players and parents of players who want to have a B1G football season.
I am glad to see growing pushback. Many are not going to take this football cancellation lying down. B1G Commish Warren needs to spill the goods or be transparent on what really went down on this cancellation decision.
It would have been prudent proceed with the season until Sept 6th and then see what the case results would show and if spiking, either cancel the second round of games or just scrap the season. At least, they tried but opted to nip the case increase in the bud.
August 17th, 2020 at 5:56 PM ^
They are in the aware, but not fully aware, stage of grief.
August 17th, 2020 at 6:00 PM ^
August 17th, 2020 at 7:10 PM ^
A reliable source in President Schlissel's office tells me that the university presidents all put their heads down on the desks, closed their eyes and took a vote. But that everyone suspects that Nebraska was peeking. Afterwards, people realized that the Rutgers president had been in the bathroom and missed the vote (only one to get the crabcakes despite Maryland's advice).