Reports: College football season could be canceled as early as this week
It is looking more and more like there will not be a college football season.
Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated tweeted Sunday night: “Attempts to salvage the fall 2020 college football season are all but over. ‘It’s gotten to a critical state,’ one told SI. ‘I think all of us will be meeting with our boards in the coming days. We have work to do that is no fun.’”
ESPN tweeted, “Commissioners of the Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting on Sunday, as there is growing concern among college athletics officials that the upcoming football season and other fall sports can’t be played.”
There are various reports that the Big Ten will cancel fall sports because of the coronavirus pandemic, possibly as soon as Monday, and that the league is talking to other Power Five conferences about making a joint statement later in the week.
The Big Ten has already hit the pause button on progressing to practices in pads this week. There are reports that the Big Ten commissioner favors a spring season. Its presidents were set to meet Sunday night. ESPN is reporting that Pac-12 presidents and chancellors are scheduled to meet on Tuesday. And Kirk Bohls of the Austin-American Statesman is reporting that the Big 12 will meet Tuesday to discuss the football season.
“Nobody wanted to be the first to do it,” a Power Five coach told ESPN, “and now nobody will want to be the last.”
All this comes after the Mid-American Conference announced on Saturday that is canceling all fall sports. Part of the reason for the cancellation, said the conference, is advice it has received from various health experts.
That has led to the following question: If it’s unsafe for the Mid-American Conference to play fall sports, how is it safe for the Power Five conferences to play fall sports?
Meanwhile, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence is among those pushing back against a cancellation.
Lawrence tweeted Sunday, “People are just as much, if not more at risk, if we don’t play. Players will be sent home to their own communities where social distancing is highly unlikely and medical care and experience will be placed on the families if they were to contract COVID-19.”
While that might be true, there will be liability issues for the schools and conferences if a student-athlete contracts COVID-19 on campus while playing sports and suffers lasting health problems.
There have been reports that college administrators have become concerned about reports of possible heart damage in young people associated with contracting the virus.
There has been some speculation that the SEC might still try and play football even if other conferences decide to punt on fall football. That seems unlikely considering many states in the SEC footprint continue to see high numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
The league had just announced on Friday the two additional opponents for members as part of a 10-game conference-only schedule. Kentucky was assigned Ole Miss (home) and Alabama (away) to go with its original schedule of home games against South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Mississippi State and road games against Florida, Missouri, Tennessee and Auburn.
This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 7:48 PM.
