Will coronavirus cancel college football this fall? It depends, NCAA president says
The uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, especially for colleges and universities, has thrown the 2020 football season into question, NCAA President Mark Emmert said.
Schools won’t be ready to compete in fall sports, including football, if students don’t return to campus for the semester, Emmert said in a Friday evening interview on the NCAA’s Twitter account.
“If a school doesn’t reopen, then they’re not going to be playing sports. It’s really that simple,” Emmert said.
About three quarters of colleges and universities tracked by The Chronicle of Higher Education plan to reopen for in-person classes this fall. But many schools are making contingency plans and asking students to be flexible depending on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Chronicle.
“All of the commissioners and every president that I’ve talked to is in clear agreement: If you don’t have students on campus, you don’t have student-athletes on campus,” he said.
That doesn’t mean schools have to be back to where they were before the pandemic, Emmert said, “but you have to treat the health and well being of the athletes at least as much as the regular students.”
Schools will probably have to re-start athletics at different times depending on their situation, he said. Some teams may not be able to play a full schedule, he said, and the NCAA would have to figure out how that would affect the decision on which teams participate in championships.
“I’ll be delighted to have those debates later in the fall,” he said.
“What if there is a flare-up in a community on a campus? What do we do then? How does the campus handle it? How does the fan base handle it? What do you do with your student-athletes? We’ve got just a little bit of time to think through all of those scenarios,” Emmert said.
Emmert and Brian Hainline, chief medical officer for the NCAA, said in the interview that testing and contact tracing need to improve before any sports can start again.
“What does testing really mean and how often does it have to be done, especially if you’re in a contact sport and the athletes are close to each other?” Hainline said.
The other issue is what to do about games, when thousands of people crowd into stadiums with no hope of social distancing.
“Just because there’s some regulation that’s been lifted doesn’t mean that ... you should immediately put 105,000 fans in a football stadium,” the NCAA president said.
“I think that the proper thing to do and the sensible thing to do is a phased approach. It’s plausible to me that early in the season, let’s just stick with football, you see a very limited fan access, but by later in the season, as things develop, hopefully in a very positive way, you all of sudden can see larger fan bases attending,” he said.
This story was originally published May 9, 2020 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Will coronavirus cancel college football this fall? It depends, NCAA president says."
