Logic behind conference only schedule?

My understanding is this is because a conference can set a specific standard. For example, the same testing protocol, the same response to positive test and so on. It possible that a small school would ignore a positive test and let a star player play. Also testing is so expensive for a whole football team and staff, it is possible a small school could not afford to test up to standards...

They will be losing money when the networks can’t televise their conference games.

Attendance and 3 out of 4 OOC games are peanuts compared to what the schools divide up from the SEC contracts w the networks

I feel bad for schools like UTSA.

Big schools don’t want to pay Little Sisters of the Poor 3 million dollars to play a home game that they can’t make a revenue/profit from off of the gate/concessions/parking etc.

That’s what it’s about.

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There’s no logic. Where is the NCAA in all of this? What do they get paid for?

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You really don’t know how this works. The NCAAs power comes from its member institutions. At the end of the day, the NCAA isn’t going to mandate what conferences do in this situation.

The only logic is the money.

I don't think the rent a win schools can afford to play with empty stadiums. They barely make money without the virus.

A couple reasons. Most of which have already been said about money.

The biggest is by dumping some of the “less important” games on the schedule it opens up more bye weeks. It makes it easier to reschedule should a game need to be postponed.

scheduling flexibility

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Attendance and 3 out of 4 OOC games are peanuts compared to what the schools divide up from the SEC contracts w the networks

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There will certainly be some contractual issue to negotiate/litigate with respect to the decision. I.e. Are the TV networks still obligated to pay the full amount of the contract for the 2020 season if they can't air 3-4 games for each school. That said, the majority of the revenue generated by the football program comes from ticket sales/contributions...not the media rights (though that is a significant sum)

I suspect the SEC and LSU have crunched those numbers relative to what the financial loss would be by paying 6 figure sums to schools to play in an empty stadium (or significantly reduced attendance)

ALL schools are going to see a big reduction in overall revenue this year (some more than others), and they are doing what they can to mitigate those losses. Without being able to sell tickets to games vs. Nicholls and UTSA, those games are big financial losses. Another loss would be if the game vs. Rice was canceled (and it is likely Rice was going to try to get out of that one). Finally, the BIG benefit of the Texas game was a sellout home crowd paying a premium ticket price for that game. Given the chance, LSU desperately wants to play that game in a season where they can sell out Tiger Stadium vs. minimal capacity in 2020. It makes too much financial sense for LSU to push that game to different year if they can.

The little schools need the payout from big schools to fund their budgets. But the big schools are only willing to pay those amounts because they know the attendance will make up for it. Without fans, those crappy non-conf. games have no financial benefit for either side.

Just chalk it up as consequence number 1,345,458 of the short-sighted thinking to completely shut down in order to save a relatively small amount of the population