College Football

Ivy League canceling football, all fall sports

The Ivy League has canceled all fall sports, including football, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, again potentially foreshadowing a nationwide shutdown of college athletics.

Winter sports, including basketball, won’t begin until Jan. 1, if at all.

In March, the Ivy League was first to make the unprecedented decision to cancel its conference basketball tournaments due to the coronavirus. Every league soon followed, leading to the first-ever cancellation of the NCAA Tournament.

The Ivy League will determine at a later date whether it is feasible to move fall sports to the spring.

“As a leadership group, we have a responsibility to make decisions that are in the best interest of the students who attend our institutions, as well as the faculty and staff who work at our schools,” the league said in a statement. “These decisions are extremely difficult, particularly when they impact meaningful student-athlete experiences that so many value and cherish.

“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, consistent with the policies that each of our schools is adopting as part of its reopening plans this fall.”

Though the Ivy League was prescient — and initially faced some criticism — in leading the charge of cancellations in March, FBS programs are less likely to follow its lead this time.

Given the financial standing of Ivy League members and the relative unimportance of their respective FCS football teams without meaningful media contracts, the schools wouldn’t be devastated by the potential loss of an entire season. However, several large FBS programs would lose several tens of millions of dollars if the football season is eliminated.

The Ivy League joins multiple Division II and III schools which have already scrapped fall sports. Fellow FCS programs could soon follow suit — including the Patriot League, which was scheduled to play numerous non-conference games against the Ivy League — given the optics of the increasing number of schools taking precautionary measures.