Mountain West postpones fall sports
Conference is evaluating possibility of playing games in spring instead
The Mountain West Conference announced Monday it has indefinitely postponed all fall sports due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.
Presidents of the conference’s schools met Monday to formally postpone the 2020 seasons for football, cross-country, soccer and volleyball. The league’s board of directors had just last week decided to postpone the start of the fall season, pushing competition start dates into late September.
“While we are disappointed for our student-athletes, coaches, staff and fans, we understand that today’s decision made by the Mountain
West board of directors has the best interest of all in mind,” University of New Mexico athletic director Eddie Nuñez said in a statement.
Neither Nuñez nor UNM’s coaches were made available for comment Monday, with a spokesman for the athletic department asking media to respect each team’s privacy and not try to contact anyone tied to the school. The rationale: “Quite honestly, it’s another really hard day for them.”
Messages left for multiple coaches were not immediately returned. Nuñez is scheduled to address the media Tuesday afternoon.
The Mountain West became the second conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision to postpone its 2020 season. The Mid-American Conference was the first FBS league to formally postpone fall sports. The FBS is the top level of college football.
The MWC will consider the feasibility of rescheduling seasons for all fall sports teams, including the possibility of moving them to the spring. It also will evaluate training opportunities for players and staff, essentially leaving the door open for teams to continue working out in the absence of competition.
“Since the start of the pandemic, our membership and staff have been working diligently to prepare
for a fall sports season,” said Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson. “We were hopeful we could carefully and responsibly conduct competition as originally scheduled with essential protocols in place. However, numerous external factors and unknowns outside our control made this difficult decision necessary.”
Last month, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made a public plea to the regents of each New Mexico university to postpone intercollegiate sports immediately. Monday’s decision leaves just New Mexico State as the only school to still have fall sports.
A member of the Western Athletic Conference in all sports except football, NMSU has not announced a change to any sport despite the fact that its football team has now had seven of its 12 games canceled by opposing teams. Three of those games were against Mountain West schools, including the Lobos.
The dominoes are expected to continue falling all week for college sports. This month the NCAA announced fall sports championships for all Division II and Division III schools had been canceled. Member conferences around the country formally called off their own fall schedules just days later.
Reports surfaced Monday afternoon that the Big Ten would become the first Power Five league to cancel football and other fall sports. The Pac-12 is expected to make a similar move at some point this week. The Atlantic
Coast Conference vowed to move forward with an altered schedule in which its football teams would play a 10-game, conference-only schedule.
The financial impact of Monday’s decision will be enormous for UNM. The school generates an estimated minimum $10 million to $12 million in revenues thanks to a new TV contract with FOX and CBS, its ties to the postseason bowl schedule and the College Football Playoff, not to mention multimedia rights and revenues generated by home attendance, merchandising and game guarantees against Power Five schools.
For now, the shutdown only affects traditional fall sports, although last week’s announcement by the conference formally canceled the fall seasons for baseball, golf, softball, tennis, swimming and indoor track. A decision has not been made regarding the winter sports of men’s and women’s basketball, two of the three revenue-generating sports for UNM.
Nuñez lauded the efforts athletes and support staff have made to adhere to the state-mandated health requirements. All workouts to date have been limited to small pockets of players with everyone required to wear masks and practice social distancing.
The school had erected temporary tents outside its training center at Dreamstyle Stadium to give players a place to meet and dress for workouts. The football team’s locker room has remained off-limits since the start of the pandemic, head football coach Danny Gonzales said.
UNM has conducted regular testing for its personnel. As of the most recent update provided by UNM, at least six people within the athletic department had tested positive for COVID-19.
“Our student-athletes have done everything asked of them including quarantining when arriving, being tested for COVID-19, wearing masks and social distancing,” Nuñez said. “I am extremely proud of their resiliency and dedication to their sport, this university and to the community. We will do everything possible to support them.”
San Jose State President Mary Papazian, the chairwoman of the Mountain West’s board of directors, said the safety of the people who represent the schools was as important as the communities they represent.
“Through the hard work of many over the past several months, the conference made every effort to create an opportunity for our student-athletes to compete, and we empathize with the disappointment this creates for everyone associated with our programs,” she said.
Thompson said he will continue to monitor the pandemic and try to come up with options for sports to continue at an undetermined date in the near future.
“I fully understand the impact of this outcome on our student-athletes, coaches, administrators and staff who work so hard daily to play the sports we all love, and I share in their disappointment,” he said. “We will continue to navigate this pandemic together, overcome the obstacles and return to intercollegiate athletics at the earliest opportunity.”