Penn State AD believes Big Ten won't reverse decision on football

The Big Ten and Pac-12 generated headlines and some outrage among players, parents, and fans when they postponed football and other fall sports due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic last Tuesday.

While Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour has noticed criticisms directed toward those conferences, she told reporters on Monday that the Big Ten likely isn't reversing its decision.

"The presidents and chancellors made their decision based on science, based on information from medical experts and based on concerns about uncertainty in a number of different categories," Barbour said, per ESPN's Heather Dinich.

"I don't see that changing, but I also appreciate the passion of our parents and our student-athletes and I appreciate both where their hearts and their heads are."

Parents from Penn State, Ohio State and Iowa have campaigned for Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren to reinstate the canceled fall football schedule. As of Monday afternoon, the Big Ten hasn't officially commented on a letter penned by those parents.

While Barbour previously spoke against Penn State competing in a spring football season, she said on Monday that such a format is now "viable" for the Nittany Lions:

"Obviously it's going to depend on where the virus is at the time. All of our sports are going to depend on that, but being who we are as athletic directors, we turned our attention to that pretty quickly. Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday, and along with our coaches, along with some of our sports science people, our sports medicine folks, we are far down the road on concepts. Obviously a lot to be done in terms of dotting I's and crossing T's, but we've put something together that I think is very compelling and our student-athletes and our fans and our communities will be pretty interested in."

Ohio State coach Ryan Day and Purdue's Jeff Brohm both pushed for eight-game Big Ten spring football schedules last week.