League appears to be headed to spring season shift

School presidents representing members of the Southland Conference deliberated Wednesday to determine whether the league will play football this fall or join the growing trend of conferences opting to push back their respective seasons until the spring of 2021.

A decision could be announced as early as Thursday morning. On Tuesday, a majority of SLC school athletic directors recommended holding off on playing football until the spring due to concerns about COVID-19.

Earlier Wednesday, it was announced that the “Battle of the Piney Woods” game between rivals Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin would not be played at NRG Stadium in 2020.

Houston Baptist, Sam Houston and SFA are among the 11 members of the Southland, a NCAA Division I conference that competes in football on the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level.

“In the next day or two, we will have a resolution if the Southland is going to play football,” Sam Houston coach K.C. Keeler said. “Right now it doesn’t look very good.”

Lone Star Sports and Entertainment, which runs the Sam

Houston State-SFA game for NRG Stadium, released a statement that said the facility would not host the 2020 event. The game has been played at the home of the Texans every year without interruption since 2010, the year SFA last beat Sam Houston. The Bearkats have won the last nine games in the series.

The 2020 SLC matchup between Sam Houston and SFA was scheduled for Oct. 3.

“As far as the Battle of the Piney Woods, I feel it became a realization with the limitations that we were going to have in terms of crowd size, it didn’t make a lot of sense having it in NRG Stadium,” Keeler said.

During the SLC’s virtual football media day July 22, commissioner Tom Burnett said the league was determined to play a 2020 football season in the fall as planned.