The NCAA has canceled all its national championship occasions this fall, a resolution that does not represent the highest point of school football, because there might not be enough schools competing in sports such as football and women’s volleyball during the first half of 2020-21. school year.
NCAA President Mark Emmert made the announcement Thursday in a video posted on Twitter, but it’s transparent that this happens as more and more meetings cancel down fall sports seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Unfortunately, tragically, this will be the case this fall. Close it completely,” Emmert said. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t and can’t turn to winter and spring and say, “How can we create a championship valid for those students?” There are tactics to do it. I’m convinced we can sense that. schools and meetings must move forward, let’s do it.”
Emmert said the NCAA would prioritize the organization of the winter and spring sports championships because they, NCAA basketball tournaments, were canceled when COVID-19 reached its first peak in the United States in March.
Sports from autumn to spring still wish to pass through the Division I Board, which is composed of representatives of the 32 conferences, and be approved through the DI Board of Directors.
“If we replace the model, what we have to do anyway because of the virus, we reduce the length of the brackets, we do everything on predetermined sites of young people running across the country, we use predetermined sites, transfer to bubble models or semicircles, of course not,” says Emmert. “Will this create additional conflicts and challenges, of course. But is it feasible? I’m not going to do that.”
Last week, the NCAA Board of Governors said the national championships of a game would be canceled if less than 50% of the groups participating in the game played a normal season. Divisions II and III continued almost until their fall championships were canceled.
Division I — made up of 357 schools — held on, but as conference after conference canceled their fall seasons, the tipping point was reached.
In addition to women’s football and volleyball, NCAA fall sports include cross-check-out, box hockey, soccer and men’s water polo. Conference schools that have yet to cancel their fall season may retire to host regular season competitions in the coming months.
Although there are no playoffs from the football championship subdivision this calendar year, the point of the Division I festival in the sport, the Football Bowl subdivision, is unaffected. College football playoffs are organized through conferences, and six of the 10 FBS leagues are still approaching one season, adding the tough Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and Southeast conferences.
Early Thursday, the NCAA’s leading medical officer and two of his infectious disease advisers warned that the out-of-control spread of COVID-19 in the United States remained a major obstacle that school sports had to overcome.
“I feel like the Titanic. We’ve hit the iceberg and we’re looking for the moment we deserve for the band to play,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, executive assistant director at Emory University in Atlanta.
Del Rio, a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 Advisory Committee, gave the impression with Dr. Brian Hainline, Medical Director of the NCAA, a webinar organized through the Society of Infectious Diseases of America.
“We want to focus on what’s vital,” Del Rio said. “What is vital now is that we want this virus. Not having autumn sports this year, this virus, would be for me the number one priority.”
The United States has recorded more than five million cases of COVID-19.
Earlier this week, Big Ten and Pac-12 have become the first Power Five meetings not to play football or any games this fall. Emmert called the moves devastating for school games, although the ACC, Big 12 and SEC continue to do so for the time being.
Sports principals and school coaches have argued that schools provide structured environments with common tests and strict protocols that make athletes safer than the general population.
“We had positive tests when our student-athletes first came back here,” said Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. “We’ve had a dramatic decline since they passed under our umbrella, and that’s outdated. Basically, we have our student-athletes under our umbrella. On a college campus where students move into class, it’s hard to create a bubble.”
Hainline said that about 1% to 2% of college athletes who were evaluated in schools tested positive for COVID-19. Del Rio said meetings make other decisions because they have other information, but because they assess the dangers differently.
Some meetings will say, “We’ll move on.” It’s a very narrow path, I hope there may not be any infection, and if there are infections, we can trip over them and we can prevent them and possibly we wouldn’t. we have an epidemic,” Del Rio said. But other meetings say, “No. Our tolerance is 0 risk, and we won’t.”
“These are precisely the same knowledge that is looked at in other ways.”