UConn football opts out

HARTFORD, Conn. – 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,” athletic director 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.

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

“In those three incidents, there was a total of 22 people and the average (isolation) time was 10 days,” Edsall said.

That meant that only 30% of the team was available for the 14 workouts the Huskies have had this summer, he said.

Senior left tackle Ryan Van Demark read a statement to the media from