College basketball was robbed of a postseason in March because of the coronavirus.
Eight months later, college football is in a race to the finish with an eerily similar surge of COVID-19 cases around the country.
“The whole thing is going to hell. I don’t know how we finish,” an FBS head coach told Yahoo Sports.
This weekend alone, 13 games have been postponed or canceled because of COVID-19 outbreaks. That includes four games in the SEC and games featuring three of the top five teams in the country — No. 1 Alabama at LSU, No. 3 Ohio State at Maryland and No. 5 Texas A&M at Tennessee.
ESPN.com reported that Arizona State coach and former Jets boss Herm Edwards had tested positive for coronavirus and the Sun Devils’ game against Cal was canceled.
The rise of coronavirus cases around college football coincides with a surge around the country, with 150,526 new cases and 1,104 new deaths on Thursday alone, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Power Five conference championship games are currently scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 18-19, with the Big 12 championship potentially playing the weekend before. The College Football Playoffs are set to follow with the semifinals scheduled for Jan. 1 and final on Jan. 11, though Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Thursday night that those dates could be delayed if necessary.
“I am on the CFP operations committee, and we spent some time talking about that,” Bowlsby said on Sirius XM Radio. “We have not come to any closure on it, but there is some latitude to postpone it if that need should arise.
“The same is true with some of the New Year’s Six games. I don’t know if I see us playing a championship game in February, but you just never know. These are unusual times, and things that might not otherwise be acceptable have to be considered in this kind of circumstance.”
But there is a long way to go before college football gets there and tries to finish the season that once appeared to be in danger this summer, when the Big Ten and Pac-12 initially postponed their seasons before reversing course.
