Big 12’s Bowlsby dishes on football attendance this fall, TV ratings, hoops and more

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby described the feeling of canceling the conference’s 2020 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments early on in the COVID-19 pandemic as “a little bit of an out-of-body experience.”

“You just don’t feel that’s the sort of thing you’re going to get in front of the media and say, ‘Yeah, we’re serious. We’re not playing,’” Bowlsby said during a conference call Monday to preview the upcoming tournaments this week in Kansas City.

“It’s been an adventure ever since then.”

That day in 2020 — Thursday, March 12 — marked the first full day of sports being shut down across the country after the NBA suspended a game between the Utah Jazz and host Oklahoma City Thunder and then the rest of the season. By the end of the weekend, March Madness was canceled. The NBA, PGA Tour, NASCAR, NHL, MLS, WNBA and virtually every other major sports body suspended action. MLB pushed back its opening day months.

Things still haven’t returned to normal.

Capacity was limited for football games last fall and basketball games throughout the regular season. This week’s tournaments in Kansas City, which usually draw thousands of fans, will have a reduced capacity crowd.

But Bowlsby is hopeful that with the steps being taken now — between in-venue distancing and vaccinations increasing — that crowd limitations will be lifted by the time the 2021 football season starts next fall.

“If we continue to make the kind of progress that we’re making right now on testing and on vaccinations, I think it’s not unreasonable to see a fall that could have the reduced attendance restrictions lifted,” Bowlsby said. “I think Dr. [Anthony] Fauci said that and I think others have said that’s not an unreasonable expectation, but it’s going to be a matter of what happens between now and then. If we backslide or the variants turn out to be more difficult than they have been so far, who knows?

“I don’t think there’s any metric to forecast that, but based on some of the scientific leadership we’ve heard from around the country, there seems to be some possibility that could be the case.”

TV ratings decline?

One head-scratcher throughout the pandemic, according to Bowlsby, has been TV ratings on the decline. Given that the majority of fans couldn’t attend in person, it would have seemed as though TV ratings would increase.

That wasn’t the case.

Bowlsby offered his own theory, saying people enjoy the uncertainty of live sports but right now people don’t necessarily have an appetite for that continued uncertainty given the uncertainties surrounding COVID.

He is bullish on the concept of in-person attendance returning to normal at some point in the future. He feels the in-game environment is still appealing enough for many fans.

“The environment is fun,” Bowlsby said. “People like to come back to their campuses. They identify with their schools. They identify with their teams, with their players and coaches, so I think they’ll come back.

“With that being said, I think public confidence is going to have to be rebuilt. The psychology of public assembly is going to evolve. But college athletics is a truly American phenomenon. The college collegiate model doesn’t exist like ours any place else in the world.”

Hoops hype

Asked if this was the Big 12’s best season for men’s basketball, Bowlsby said: “It would be hard to dispute, wouldn’t it?”

Bowlsby went on to compare winning in this conference to undergoing the “Labors of Hercules.”

That may be a far-fetched comparison, but there are seven teams ranked in the top 25. Baylor is No. 2 with Nos. 10-13 being West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma State and Texas. Texas Tech is No. 20 and Oklahoma is No. 25.

So the Big 12 should have 70% of its league in the NCAA Tournament, a percentage that most other conferences will not see.

On the women’s side, Baylor and West Virginia are among the ranked teams with Oklahoma State receiving votes. All three of those teams should be dancing along with Texas and Iowa State. Oklahoma is sitting on the dreaded “bubble.”

Final word

Bowlsby praised the schools throughout the conference for what has to be deemed a successful season to date. The men will play 94% of the scheduled conference regular-season games, while the women will play 100%.

The football season enjoyed similar success.

“To say this was a challenging year would be an understatement,” Bowlsby said. “There were so many things that were unanticipated and unprecedented that were sort of constant reminders that we aren’t in anything that resembles a normal situation. Having said that, I think we’re doing what we hoped we would be able to do last summer, and that’s finding ways to coexist with the virus.

“I don’t think we took inappropriate risks,” he said. “We certainly didn’t depart ever by what we were advised by our medical teams.”