SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Southern Conference Commissioner Jim Schaus sat down with Pete Yanity recently to discuss current affairs around the league for the latest installment of the Commissioner’s Corner.
 
The pair opened the discussion by talking about the league’s recent announcement that fall conference competition would be postponed until the spring due to safety concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the decision-making process that led to the move.
 
“It was a very challenging time, obviously, for all of us,” Schaus said. “We wanted to take our time. We wanted to be patient. We didn’t want to necessarily be that first conference to jump and cancel fall sports. We wanted to really take a look at the science, listen to some medical advice that we have, take a look at all aspects of this. … At the end, there were just too many hurdles, too many issues that concerned us. First and foremost, the presidents were concerned about health and safety of student-athletes, staff and coaches. I think we ended up at the right place. I think it’s probably the right decision for us at this time. We did carve out a little flexibility for some nonconference competition. Those are competitions that have always been school-oriented anyway, so they would have that flexibility to do that if they would like, and that was all approved by our presidents. That’s how they wanted to do it.”
 
One of the challenges ahead of the conference now is what a spring season will look like with both fall and spring sports competing at the same time.
 
“There’s a lot of challenges with the spring,” Schaus said. “You’re taking a lot of fall sports and you’re overlaying them for the staffs to run games management, where you might have four, five events on the same day with a smaller staff. So that’s a challenge, for sure. … I’m looking forward to playing. I’m looking forward to having an opportunity, when it’s safe and proper, to look at models that hopefully we’ll be able to activate in the spring for those sports.”
 
Winter sports, too, will be affected. The NCAA has targeted Sept. 15 to determine when basketball seasons might begin and end. Nov. 10 is currently the first scheduled day of basketball competition this year, but Schaus thinks that date is likely to be pushed back, a decision that could have seismic ramifications for the SoCon in men’s basketball in particular.
 
“Nonconference competition is very important for our conference,” he said. “We were the 13^th-ranked conference last year out of 32. Having an opportunity to play in some excellent [multi-team event] type events, playing high quality opponents, help give us a profile and a résumé for an NCAA selection committee that we need. There’s also a number of guarantee games that we play with higher-end schools. From a financial standpoint, we’d like to play those games, so I hope that there’s a nonconference schedule built in. Again, it has to make sense from a health and safety standpoint, but we’ve got to play men’s basketball and women’s basketball in our conference. We have to have an NCAA basketball tournament. That’s going to be critical financially for all the membership.”
 
Schaus also expressed excitement for the SoCon’s upcoming 100-year anniversary celebration, which will take place for the entirety of the 2021 calendar year, and touted the league’s creation of a racial equity task force.
 
“That’s something very timely in our society,” Schaus said. “We’ll have members from each of our conference institutions from different walks of life, whether athletic directors, student-athletes, coaches, other administrators on the campus, to really take a look at education and awareness of some of the racial issues in our country and how can it relate to our conference.”