Football cancellations and more Covid cases means Arizona Football ain’t happening

With Covid cases on the rise for a few college football programs, and other programs cancelling their seasons, Arizona Football is in danger.

Another day, another Arizona Football/ Covid article… I’m sorry folks, I know it seems as if we are beating a dead horse here, constantly talking about Covid and Arizona Football. However, with just a few weeks until the prospective start of the 2020 season, it’s going to be a highly discussed topic.

If you have been paying attention recently, it seems like we’re getting closer and closer to having a resolution to the upcoming season. That resolution of course being either we will have a season that will start in the “fall” or we may not have a season at all.

Arizona Wildcats

While the NCAA deadline is still set for August 21 for programs to decide if there will be fall sports this year. Either way, it seems like there is growing momentum that football will either be postponed, if not cancelled altogether.

Well on Wednesday, the University of Connecticut became the first school to announce that there will be no football at their school in 2020.

For those hoping for a football season this year got even more bad news as UCLA reported that multiple football players have tested positive for Covid.

Now look, I’m not a soothsayer and I have certainly have no personal insight, but given those recent events, we all know where this is going, right?

To me, it’s becoming more and more evident that a fall season will likely not happen at this point. Too many players are beginning to opt out of the upcoming season, particularly at the professional level, the Pac-12 has to deal with a potential player boycott, and that’s just on top of the numerous student athletes that will test positive for Covid in the future as well.

Already, NCAA President Mark Emmert is trying to get ahead of the Covid stuff prior to the 2020 season. In an interview with NBC New’s Today, Emmert said “Any school and conference that decides to move forward—and that decision won’t be until August 21—but if they decide to move forward, they have to meet a very clear, very rigid protocol… They’re not guidelines anymore. They’re mandatory.”

He went on to say “Every school has to test every athlete going forward into competition at least once a week, and no more than 72 hours before any competition…if they can’t get [results] back within a 72 hour period, they simply can’t compete. That’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality.”

So with the challenges we’re currently facing, the outlook doesn’t look good at this point. Either way, we’re just hoping we can soon and safely return to a since of normalcy! As always, Bear Down, Arizona!