I disagree that there should be dominant central control. A commissioner of football telling the Big 10 they must play, or telling the SEC that they cannot play even if they are willing to accept the risk isn't a good idea.
We don't know what different conferences have or have not been planning. I don't believe the narrative that the conferences are making hard plans and then scrambling to come up with a different plan only when that one isn't viable. The conferences have staffs of lawyers, business people, finance people, etc. They also have companies that they hire to assist with finance, business, marketing, operations, etc. They can work on multiple contingency plans and have plans, or at least plan ideas, ready in case things don't work out with Plan A. It is my assumption that the major conferences have been doing that. The smaller conferences probably can't spend too much money on such plans, but the P5 can.
I do think that there has been a very big attempt to keep football in the fall. I criticized the Big 10 and Pac 12 for announcing conference only a month ago. The criticism was because I didn't believe that plan was going to be the last modification. They can have a lot of contingency plans for: A 10 game schedule, an 8 game schedule, a regional schedule with 4 home-away games, a plan for substituting games if multiple teams can't play one weekend, a late fall schedule, a spring schedule, etc.: However, if they make a hard announcement and then have to backtrack from it, it makes them look like they don't have a clue what they are doing. I think that is what you are seeing. A backtrack from hard announcements instead of bumbling idiots.
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