The B1G was the first major conference to make a major decision on the 2020 college football season. Last week, the league announced it would play a conference-only schedule for all fall sports in 2020, which includes football.

The move was made in an effort to create more uniform testing policies and health and safety guidelines among the 14 member institutions of the B1G. It also allows the league to have a more flexible schedule than it previously had with nonconference games scheduled.

While there were a handful of marquee matchups that were nixed from the calendar — Ohio State-Oregon, Michigan-Washington, Penn State-Virginia Tech, Notre Dame-Wisconsin — it felt like a necessary move.

Penn State head coach James Franklin says it’s a decision he completely understands. On the Ross Tucker Podcast, he explained why it may help the conference have a football season this year.

“I get it. We’ve been talking about it for a couple weeks and I think the biggest thing is the control that it creates,” Franklin said. “So, what I mean by that is if we do have a stoppage of play and the conference needs to shut things down for a couple of weeks it’s obviously easier to do that when it’s all conference on conference. And then, obviously, all the protocols that we’re gonna have as a conference to keep everybody as safe as we possibly can. Not that we don’t think that other schools will do it but obviously when you’re playing different levels of schools with different types of budgets and what they’re able to do, it can be complicated.

“So, I think when you take all those things into consideration, we just felt like this was the best thing to do moving forward and still hopefully give us the opportunity to have a B1G champion and then, depending on how this thing all plays out, maybe even a team or two in the College Football Playoff.”

B1G commissioner Kevin Warren admitted that, while playing only conference games is a step in the right direction, it’s hardly a guarantee the season will happen. With a surge in COVID-19 cases in regions of the country, the fall sports season is in serious jeopardy.

Decisions about the fate of the 2020 college football season are expected to come later this month or early August.