The Pac-12 CEO group, made up of one president or chancellor from each of the conference's 12 universities, will meet Tuesday and is expected to discuss and vote on how to proceed with the 2020 football season, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN.
The growing sense around the conference is that it is highly unlikely the Pac-12 will move forward with a fall season amid concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic and will look to playing in the spring, if possible, sources said. An official decision will not come prior to Tuesday's meeting.
A conference call to include the conference's athletic directors and head football coaches was set for 5:30 p.m. PT Monday, to provide them an update on the general direction the conference is headed ahead of Tuesday's CEO call, multiple sources told ESPN.
Pac-12 athletic directors were provided updates from the conference's medical advisory committee during a call Sunday and similar information will be provided to the CEO group Tuesday.
The CEO group is expected to be briefed on growing concern about myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle often caused by a viral infection that has been linked closely to COVID-19, sources said. Myocarditis "comes on suddenly and often with significant severity, resulting in an exceptionally high risk of death caused by cardiogenic shock (the heart's inability to pump enough blood), fatal arrhythmias (abnormal heartbeats) and multiorgan failure," according to the American Heart Association.
In an interview with ESPN 700 in Salt Lake City Monday afternoon, Utah Utes team doctor David Petron, a member of the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Board, said a document of recommendations was presented to Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott on Monday to outline recommendations for how the conference should proceed.
"The recommendation will be stop contact and competitive activities at this time and the document will outline criteria that is needed to move forward with competition," Petron told host Spence Checketts.
The criteria Petron outlined stressed the need for frequent testing -- ranging from daily to weekly depending on case data in local communities -- and access to complete cardiac evaluations. Petron said there isn't the ability to test daily, but was hopeful a point-of-care test will be able to change that in the near future. Petron did not outright dismiss the idea a fall season could be completed.
How the Pac-12 moves forward will ultimately be determined by a combination of several, factors, which include how its peer conferences in the Power 5 -- most notably the Big Ten -- decide to act.
"It's naïve to say these decisions don't take into account what's going on elsewhere in the country to some degree," a conference source said.
A request from ESPN to review the document of recommendations presented to Scott was denied by a Pac-12 spokesman.
Late Sunday night, some of the biggest stars in college football voiced their desire to play the 2020 fall season. That group, which included representatives from the Pac12's #WeAreUnited unity group, asked for universally-mandated health and safety procedures related to COVID-19 for all NCAA conferences, the ability for players to opt out of the season due to safety concerns and keep their eligibility, and to "ultimately create a college football players association."
Stanford defensive end Dylan Boles told ESPN's Dan Murphy that he believes the pandemic and protests against racial injustice this summer created a situation where more players felt the need to speak up. Players from the Pac-12 group asked Scott on Thursday if they could have legal representation in future meetings. However, Scott said that if the players were to bring representation, they would be required to communicate with lawyers from the Pac-12.