Cal couldn’t play USC because of COVID but wasn’t forced to forfeit: What gives?
The Pac-12’s official position of forfeitures, announced prior to the season, seems clear:
“If an institution is unable to play a contest through its own fault, it shall forfeit such contest to its opponent. Any forfeited contest shall be regarded as a conference loss for the team making the forfeit and a conference win for its opponent.”
So why didn’t Cal forfeit the USC game once it became clear the Bears couldn’t play because of COVID?
Partly because of the next sentence in the policy:
“The Pac-12 rule provides the Commissioner with discretion to determine whether an institution is at fault or primarily at fault for an inability to play a contest based on the facts of the situation.”
But mostly, the Bears didn’t forfeit because of what that sentence led to.
After Cal informed the conference office that it didn’t have enough players to compete, commissioner George Kliavkoff had two choices:
1. Invoke the special circumstances rule and decide unilaterally, based on all available evidence, whether or not to declare a forfeit.
2. Encourage Cal and USC to find a common ground, then bring the matter back to Kliavkoff.
He opted for No. 2.
At that point, Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton and his USC counterpart, Mike Bohn, had a chat.
For the Trojans, there was one big reason to push for a forfeit.
They need two wins to become bowl-eligible. With a victory by forfeiture in hand, they would need to win just one of their last two games (against UCLA and Brigham Young) to qualify for a berth.
But as both athletic directors and their head coaches knew, a forfeiture wasn’t in the best interests of the players on either team.
Nor was this a case of the Bears ignoring the science: The team is 99.5% vaccinated but was hit by breakthrough infections — the vast majority of which, according to sources, were asymptomatic.
Their situation is exactly why the commissioner was given the authority to invoke the special circumstances rule.
What’s more, USC has spent a season-and-a-half repelling COVID, and navigating COVID protocols, in Los Angeles.
Theirs was a sympathetic ear.
“For (Cal) to not get to play would just be a crime,” USC interim coach Donte Williams told reporters after practice Tuesday.
“We want to play the game, and a forfeit is not the way to go and not the way you want to qualify for a bowl game. Our whole thing is fighting on and competing.”
Once Bohn and Knowlton reached an agreement, they went back to Kliavkoff, who invoked the special circumstances clause and rescheduled the game for Dec. 4.
In addition to being the only available date — the game must be played before bowl selections are made on Dec. 5 — the long runway gives the conference office time to find a suitable option for the TV broadcast.
(The game was scheduled for FS1.)
“The decision to not have the game count as a forfeit was made between the athletic directors at Cal and USC,” Kliavkoff told the Hotline on Wednesday.
“USC could have argued for a forfeit but decided to do what was right for their student-athletes and the student-athletes at Cal. It was an incredible show of leadership by USC.”
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