On Saturday, the Mid-American Conference voted unanimously to cancel its fall 2020 season due to coronavirus, making it the first school football league to do so.
Cancellation extends to all fall, cross-country, box hockey, soccer and volleyball sports.
The league said it took the resolution by considering “the physical condition and protection of its students-athletes, coaches and communities as their most sensitive priority.”
According to the Associated Press, the final coup came when the Power Five – the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Big Ten Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the Pac-12 Conference and the Southeast Conference (SEC) announced their goal. to eliminate the maximum number of non-conference games this fall, get rid of revenue-generating games with MAC equipment.
Instead, the league is making plans for the spring season.
“There are too many unknowns to put our student-athletes in conditions that are obviously not understood,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said at a press conference, according to CBS. “It’s not a simple decision, but it’s the right decision.”
Universities move slowly with their seasons, but with changes. The CCA plans to compete as a two-head department and allow a non-conference game that “must be played in the state of the CCA institution’s home,” for example. The University of Connecticut this week became the first individual school to cancel its football season, saying that “the demanding safety situations created through COVID-19 put our student-athletes in football at an unacceptable point of risk.”
I’m a San Francisco-based journalist, the latest news in Forbes. I have already reported for USA Today, Business Insider, The San Francisco Business Times and San Francisco
I’m a San Francisco reporter covering the latest news in Forbes. In the past I worked for USA Today, Business Insider, The San Francisco Business Times and San Jose Inside. I studied journalism at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and was editor of the Daily Orange, the university’s independent student newspaper. Follow me on Twitter @rachsandl or email me [email protected].