(Reuters) – The Pac-12 Conference on Tuesday joined the Big Ten in shelving the college football season and all other sports for the remainder of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, the league commissioner said.
The Pac-12 – comprising 12 large western U.S. universities including the University of Southern California, Stanford University and University of California at Los Angeles – and the Big Ten are two of the so-called Power Five conferences whose athletic programs dominate the competition for national sports titles, especially in football.
The decisions by the Pac-12 and Big Ten will heighten the pressure on the remaining three Power Five leagues – the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12 Conference – to come to a determination about whether to proceed with a fall football season during a global pandemic.
(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Alistair Bell)
