This post will be updated all week with new developments as college football prepares for a season during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The college sports and college football world got yet another seismic wave of developments to the 2020 season last week when the Big 10 announced it would move to conference-only schedules.
The PAC-12 followed shortly after, but the rest of the conferences have stayed silent for now.
I wanted to take the liberty as we go ahead into this week to compile everything we know about the 2020 year to date.
Jamie Pollard penned an open letter on Monday morning about the financial ramifications of a season without fall sports.
So far, the Big 12, SEC and ACC have not ruled out playing games outside of its conference for 2020, but we got more news this morning.
The ACC has gone ahead and postponed its planned virtual media days that were scheduled to start a week from Tuesday.
Not to mention, the Patriot League – which houses seven NCAA FCS Football teams – announced the cancellation of fall sports for the semester this morning.
Monday Evening – 6:00 p.m. Hawaii Football has added a game to its 2020 schedule against Robert Morris scheduled for September 26 at Aloha Stadium.
The Rainbow Warriors had four open slots in their schedule to fill, one with Fordham, and another three with Arizona, UCLA, and Oregon following the PAC 12’s conference only scheduling switch.
Tuesday after lunch – The MAC has published a statement, now, following in the steps of the ACC and canceling its virtual media days.
The series of interviews were scheduled for August 3 and 4 and the conference also said that, “A decision concerning moving forward will happen at the appropriate time.”
Wednesday Night – The Big 12 has announced that it is pushing back its 2020 Media Days from July 20 and 21 to Monday, August 3.
“As everyone is aware, our head coaches and student-athletes have not been able to collectively engage in organized team functions since athletics activities were suspended in March. We felt it was prudent to give coaches a chance to re-acclimate with their teams prior to participating in our annual season preview event,” said Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
Wednesday Night – The NCAA announced late tonight that teams can qualify for bowl games while playing a schedule that contains two teams from the FCS (Football Championship Subdivision).
There was previously a limit of one FCS team on a schedule, so long as a school wanted to be bowl eligible at the end of the year.
As for how many wins it will take to make a bowl game in a sub-12 game schedule season?
Nick Carparelli, executive director of the Football Bowl Association, confirmed to ESPN that any team’s record with a win percentage of .500 or better are eligible to make the postseason games.
“In a season that’s scheduled for only 10 games, 5-5 is already bowl-eligible by NCAA rules,” Carparelli said.
Thursday Morning – The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) determined today that it would be canceling all of its fall sports, including football, according to The Stadium’s Brett McMurphy.
McMurphy references seven schools that were scheduled to have games against MEAC teams this year. Those schools are Ohio (Week 1), Appalachian State (Week 1), Liberty (Week 2), South Florida (Week 2), Arkansas State (Week 2), Charlotte (Week 2), and East Carolina (Week 3).
Thursday Afternoon – Bruce Feldman tweeted today that the Colonial Athletic Conference is expected to announce tomorrow that it will not be playing football in 2020.
If this checks out, and there is no reason to think that it won’t, that would mean another 12 FBS schools would be lose a game on their 2020 schedules.
Those schools are Ball State (Week 1), Western Michigan (Week 1), Kansas (Week 1), Northern Illinois (Week 1), Maryland (Week 1), Stanford (Week 1), Duke (Week 2), Florida Atlantic (Week 2), North Carolina (Week 3), Pittsburgh (Week 3), Massachusetts (Week 3), Wake Forest (Week 3).
Friday Morning – The Atlantic 10 and the America East Conference have both followed suit this morning with the Patriot League’s plan to cancel fall sports for this fall. However, both the A10 and AEC plan on playing out their fall sports during the spring semester.
