Sign of Things to Come? Colleges Begin Canceling 2020 Football Seasons

With coronavirus cases surging here in the United States, there is a very real fear among sports fans that NCAA college football will be taking a hiatus in 2020.

We have already witnessed a mixed bag of result for the professional sports leagues that have returned to play.  The MLS and NBS bubbles seem to be keeping players and staff safe enough, and NASCAR was never really going to be a big issue given that the whole point of racing is to put distance between yourself and the rest of the pack.

Major League Baseball has been an abysmal failure, however, with 20% of games already postponed or canceled at the end of the first week of the abbreviated season.

So, in the case of NCAA football, the outlook has been bleak.

One school has already thrown in the towel this week.

UConn, which last month officially left the American Athletic Conference, announced Wednesday that it is suspending its football program for the 2020 season because of the coronavirus pandemic.

UConn, which went 2-10 in its final season in the AAC, is the first FBS program to suspend its football team because of the pandemic. The Huskies were expected to play as an independent this season.

“After receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting with football student-athletes, we’ve decided that we will not compete on the gridiron this season,” UConn athletic director David Benedict said in a news release. “The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptable level of risk.”

Just days ago, football players from the PAC-12 conference penned a letter to the NCAA and their conference stating that, if their safety demands were not met, they would be walking away from the 2020 campaign as well.

Perhaps the biggest bet in Vegas at this moment is just how many college football games we’re going to get this year…if any.