Orlando Sentinel

Football season off for UConn

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UConn canceled its 2020-2021 football season Wednesday, becoming the first FBS program to do so because of the coronaviru­s pandemic, after other schools had taken the Huskies off their schedules and the governor was reluctant to allow players to travel to states with high infection rates.

“After receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting with football student-athletes, we’ve decided that we will not compete on the gridiron this season,” AD David Benedict said. “The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptab­le level of risk.”

UConn had been scheduled to play its first season as an independen­t after leaving the American Athletic Conference.

The Huskies had already been taken off the schedules of Illinois, Indiana, Maine and Mississipp­i by those schools, and games against North Carolina and Virginia remained uncertain, UConn officials said. Many of the Power Five conference­s are playing league-only games this season.

But coach Randy Edsall said the decision had nothing to do with UConn’s conference status.

“If I was the head coach in a conference — a Power Five conference, a Group of Five conference — I’d be saying the same thing. I’d be doing the same thing,” Edsall said. “Because these young men’s lives are more important than money.”

The Huskies began spring practice Feb. 4 and were one of the only teams in the country to complete a full spring schedule.

The team returned to campus July 1 and no one has tested positive for the coronaviru­s, UConn officials said.

But the team had several scares, with three players showing COVID-19 symptoms at various times this summer, requiring those players and everyone they had contact with to be isolated until those tests came back negative.

Senior left tackle Ryan Van Demark read a statement to the media from the team, which he said was united in its agreement to cancel the season.

“We love this game and we love competing,” he said. “We came to campus in the beginning of July knowing there would be challenges presented by the pandemic, but it is apparent to us now that these challenges are impossible to overcome.”

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