Will All College and University Athletic Programs Survive COVID-19?

[VetteMan]

The Atlantic 10 announced today that it will postpone all fall sports conference competition and championships until spring 2021. The conference said it will include a " look-in-window " in Mid-September to allow for a "potentially truncated competitive schedule amongst conference opponents if the Covid-19 risk has substantially been reduced." If the risk levels do not improve, teams will continue training this fall to prepare to compete in the spring.

[Paladin]

Monday, the D-I FCS conference CAA will announce the cancellation of FB. They join the Ivy, Patriot and MEAC in cancelling FB.

National runner up in the FCS championship game, James Madison Univ. (who lost to champ North Dakota St.) is part of the CAA along with Villanova, Delaware, Richmond, William & Mary, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, among others.

[Omega]

The Board of Governors of the North Carolina University System has directed their member institutions to come up with specific plans to reduce their budget by 25 to 50%. Will sports be low hanging fruit for the bean counters?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coron ... 21897.html

[VetteMan]

The SWAC ( Southwestern Athletic Conference ) that is HBCU schools have pushed fall sports back to January of 2021. Some people may say who cares ? Well teams that had SWAC non-conference opponents in 2020 are as follows: Auburn, Mississippi State, Miami of Ohio, UAB, TCU, and Southern Mississippi. The signs of no fall football continues to grow larger each and every day.

[VetteMan]

There are 130 total teams in the FBS, and as of today ( to the best that I can count ) 75 teams have seen at least 1 game canceled due to either the Big and the Pac cancelling OOC games or smaller FCS schools. The worst hit is BYU who right now does not have a valid game on their schedule until Oct 2nd, as all of their 5 games have now been cancelled. ( Utah, MSU, ASU, Minnesota, Stanford ) That leaves them with just 7 games left. Hawaii has lost 4 games. ( Arizona, UCLA, Oregon, Fordam ) Notre Dame has lost 3 games. ( Wisconsin, Stanford, USC ), plus the Navy game has been postponed. At least 15 other teams have lost 2 games. Does not look promising at all.

[VetteMan]

There has been plenty of talk about Notre Dame and the ACC working together to fill out a 2020 football schedule, and if correct the top choice for that scheduling model involves the Irish becoming a full ACC member for one season. In this model, Notre Dame would do what the rest of the league is doing, and that is ti play a 10 game conference schedule. The full schedule would also include one non-conference game, which could be Navy depending on what the ACC decides to do.

[VetteMan]

In a development that under scores the looming difficulty of playing college football this season, the entire Michigan State football team is entering a 14 day quarantine after one staffer and one student athlete tested positive for Covid-19. The announcement comes two days after the school paused football workouts after another staff member tested positive for the coronavirus.

[VetteMan]

Three days after Michigan State paused it's preseason workouts due to a staff testing positive for Covid-19, Rutgers released a statement Sat. afternoon that it's shutting down team activities as well after a total of 10 tests came back positive for the virus. Since returning to campus on June 15th, Rutgers football has experienced 4 positive tests for Covid-19. Today, we learn of 6 additional positive Covid-19 results in our latest weekly testing cycle, As a result, we have paused all in person team activities, quarantines our entire program and will work diligently with Rutgers Medical Experts, and State and Local authorities to determine our next steps.

[svac83]

Don't you guys think and i can be wrong that all college and high school sports depends on congress passing liability protection for catching covid-19?
I mean you pass liability protection and then you offer athletes to do what they want compete or not and that allows you to do the same with fans and you move on.
If not the reality is there may not be sports for years.

[VetteMan]

It seems as if it just continues on: The MEAC conference has suspended the Fall sports season due to Covid-19. The Council of Presidents and Chancellors of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference has announced that the league will suspend all sports competition, championship and non-championship segments, for the 2020 fall season, as a result of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. A decision is yet to be made on whether fall sports schedules will be moved to the 2021 spring semester.

Earlier this month, when the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference ( MECA ) confirmed that it had suspended football as well as other fall sports seasons, it was expected that a number of players from the FCS conference would possibly look to transfer. Late this week, South Carolina States, DL Roderick Perry has entered his name into the NCAA transfer database. With that said, Perry would be leaving the Bulldogs as a graduate transfer. That would allow him to play immediately in 2020. I'm pretty sure that South Carolina State is located in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Orangeburg is not a great distance from Aiken, South Carolina. It got me to thinking about the Perry brothers, William ( Refrigerator ) , and I think his brothers first name was Michael, and they both lived in Aiken, SC. Being that I was living and working in that area at the time, I have at times driven by their homes on the way to work.

[Omega]

ACC announces eleven game season:

https://www.wspa.com/sports/college-spo ... art-later/

[Omega]

SEC announces conference only schedule:

https://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.c ... -schedule/

[Omega]

Social justice and economic demands now entering the discussion of play or no play decisions by the powers that be in college football. A manifesto from PAC 12 players:
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us ... all-season

[VetteMan]

The release of this seasons Big 10 schedule will be delayed at least one more day. The conference was initially planning to release it's 2020 schedule on Tuesday, along with medical guidelines and protocols, but that release has been delayed until t least Wednesday. The delay comes after news broke of a Covid-19 outbreak within the Rutgers football program in which the program's total positive cases doubled.

[Omega]

UCONN becomes first FBS team to cancel season:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/s ... oronavirus

[Omega]

NCAA Board directs each division to safeguard student-athlete well-being, scholarships and eligibility

https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/me ... ligibility

This is the right thing to do but it also might give more member schools and conferences an out to cancel the season.

[Omega]

Pac-12 rescue operation: Coronavirus loan program would bail out athletic departments if football is canceled

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/05/ ... -canceled/

[purpleblood1]

Rumor is all fall sports will be cancelled at all levels end of week.

[VetteMan]

The Pac-12 football players behind the ( We Are United ) group met with conference commissioner Larry Scott very recently and came away from the meeting "disappointed and deeply concerned" and " discouraged by the tone, tenor and general unpreparedness of the Pac-12 leadership." In a letter signed by 18 Pac-12 football players, and sent to Scott recently, the group said their interactions with Scott made them feel that the commissioner is "not taking them seriously. One of the main concerns at this point, seemed to be how frequently the coronavirus tests were being conducted.

[VetteMan]

The University of Louisville has suspended activities for four fall sports after 29 student athletes tested positive for Covid-19. All activities for men's and women's soccer, field hockey and volleyball have been halted. The school announced that contact tracing revealed that the outbreak is linked to an off-campus party, and that several other athletes are in quarantine after being potentially exposed. The Louisville news arrives as the wave of Nationwide Covid-19 cases in recent months has trended younger, linked in part to people gathering at parties and in bars.