Ivy League Cancels Fall Sports, Will Not Play Any Sports Before January 1
Yesterday, we discussed how the Ivy League was going to release their decision on how they planned to proceed with fall sports on their respective campuses on Wednesday. As one may remember, the Ivy was the first conference to cancel their postseason tournament in basketball due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was widely considered to be jumping the gun at the time. Instead, within 48 hours, all the other conferences that hadn’t completed their conference tournaments followed suit. MLB postponed Opening Day of their schedule while the NHL and NBA effectively paused their seasons at that point.
On Wednesday, the news that the Ivy League had reached their decision came out and the ramifications of the decision are far reaching for the schools of that conference. Reports say that the Ivy League has made the decision to cancel fall sports in their entirety. In the same report, the conference is not going to entertain playing any sports until at least January 1, 2021, which could hamper winter sports as well. That could really throw a wrench in the hockey and basketball seasons, both men’s and women’s, this year. Further information for winter sports is expected to come in the next week or two.
Sources close to the league says that they hope to be able to move their fall sports to the spring, according to Dana O’Neil, though that remains to be seen. It would be a tough sell for anyone that currently is outside the Ivy League because if non-conference opponents were still playing on a regular slate, it would be nearly impossible to get games scheduled. That could lead to the schools just playing an all-conference seven-game slate starting somewhere around early April and ending in mid to late May more than likely.
Once again, the Ivy League is at the forefront of the college sports world when it comes to making tough decisions. While they are a FCS conference in football and thus not relevant in the bowl system that could make things difficult in regards to shuffling the schedule around for the FBS, it’s still a trendsetting option. How other schools and conferences will react to the decision is still up in the air at this point in time. While it’s quite possible that the Patriot League, another FCS conference in football, may follow suit, it may take more for the Power Five conferences to change their mindset at this point in time.
After all, college football is the lifeblood that drives the economics of a lot of schools that are in the FBS. Stanford announced that they would be cutting 11 of their 36 varsity sports at the end of the 2020-21 academic year as they continue to deal with the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the revenue generated from college football, who knows how wide that chasm could potentially get. Brett McMurphy from Stadium stated that sources say that the FBS is unlikely to make a similar call as the Ivy League, stating that the Ivy League schools “aren’t as vulnerable financially.”
The first domino has toppled over regarding how things will unfold in the fall for college sports. We’ll now have to sit and wait to see what the next step in the chain may be.