The Ivy Leauge announced on Wednesday that all upcoming fall sports will be canceled. They’ve become the first Division I conference to suspend football.
What We Know:
- The Ivy League presidents placed all sports on hold until at least January, making it the first Division I conference that will not play football as scheduled in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Fall sports in the conference from football and men’s basketball to cross country and sailing have been placed in limbo for now. Practices could take place in the fall, beginning with limited individual and small group workouts, but the presidents announced that conditions would have to improve dramatically for sports to be played next year.
- The presidents said in a statement that sports could not be played under campus-wide policies that include restrictions on student and staff travel, social distancing requirements, and limits on group gatherings. “With the information available to us today regarding the continued spread of the virus, we simply do not believe we can create and maintain an environment for intercollegiate athletic competition that meets our requirements for safety and acceptable levels of risk,” the statement read.
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There has been discussion around moving collegiate football to the spring. In response, Princeton football Coach Bob Surace said, “One word. Hope.” Surace added that a vaccine, better therapies, and people following health guidelines would be necessary if there were any chance of playing in the spring, but there is also the fear of a second wave of the virus this winter.
- Although the caliber and prestige of football in the Ivy League conference are far below that of the best programs in the country, the decision made by the eight Ivy League presidents could have great influence among university leaders nationwide who are tasked with deciding when and how sports will return to college campuses. “I think other conferences around the country are going to follow,” Columbia athletic director Peter Pilling said.
- After the Ivy League announced its decision, Ohio State and North Carolina became the latest schools to suspend voluntary workouts after outbreaks among athletes.
- The decision also follows three of the conference’s schools announcing plans for reopening their campuses to only some students in the fall. One of those schools, Harvard, said it would only allow 40 percent of its students, mostly freshmen, on campus and that all classes would be held remotely.
- The Ivy League was also the first conference to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments back in March before the Coronavirus pandemic took over the country.
- The Ivy League universities receive large endowments outside of athletics. This has allowed them to make decisions regarding athletics without needing to consider the money or potential financial loss from canceling a season. Many other schools count on those sports, particularly college football, to bring in millions of dollars in television, ticket, and advertising revenues that fuel the athletic departments. This complicates the decision for other Division I conferences to put a hold on fall sports.
- Colleges at the lower Divison II and III levels of the N.C.A.A., which contains more than 1,100 schools, have already begun to cancel fall sports. The dozen Division II schools in the California Collegiate Athletic Association announced back in May that it would cancel fall sports shortly after the Cal State University chancellor said that courses this fall would be held online.
- The Patriot League, which includes Lehigh, Lafayette, Fordham, and other mostly small colleges in the Northeast, announced last month that its fall sports would play league competition from the end of September until Thanksgiving, yet travel by airplane would not be permitted.
- Morehouse College, which competes at the Division II level, became the first scholarship program to cancel its football season. The decision by Morehouse, a historically Black college, highlighted a troubling prospect: that if the school played football it could potentially harm even more African-American people, which through comorbidity factors, living conditions or inadequate access to health care have shown to be more vulnerable to the most severe effects of the virus.
U.S. colleges are working to create plans for the semester that begins in August or September, instituting steps for the safe return of students and deciding whether it’s too risky to resume the high-contact sport of football. “Conferences will now have to explain how they can do a better job of protecting their athletes than the Ivy League,” said Christopher Marsicano, assistant professor of the practice of higher education at Davidson College in North Carolina.
