Following the lead set by the Pac-12 Conference earlier this month, the Big 12 Conference has announced that if one of its football teams cannot play this fall due to COVID-19 issues, that team would be forced to forfeit the game, meaning a win for their opponent. In that scenario, both teams would be listed as having “played the game” for the purposes of creating conference standings with the same number of games.
The Pac-12 had made the exact same announcement to their games on August 13th, although the conference added that forfeits would count as a loss in the final standings. The Big 12’s announcement said in the event that both teams would not be able to play due to COVID-19, the game would then be considered a “no contest”.
