MAC shuts down football, fall sports
Northern Illinois football won’t play this fall as the Mid-American Conference announced Saturday it has delayed its season for all four fall sports because of concerns about COVID-19.
The league is the first in FBS to opt out of the fall sports season as speculation about the feasibility of college sports heightens.
The MAC is working out plans for spring competition.
Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier, who has been the most vocal athletic director nationally to advocate a move to the spring , said the decision reached Saturday morning among league presidents boiled down to safety.
“It’s a real tough day for us,” he said. “Tough issues, a tough decision. At the end of the day, we all do believe that COVID has spoken and science is science.”
The 12-member league took a massive financial hit with the loss of buy games from Power Five conferences who moved to a conferenceonly season. The Huskies potentially will lose more than $1 million after the Big Ten move.
Northern Illinois has won four of the last nine MAC football titles and has a reputation for upsetting Power Five teams on its schedule. The Huskies were scheduled to play Iowa and Maryland this season.
NIU was instrumental in the MAC’s decision.
The league’s presidents met Thursday to finalize scheduling, but NIU President Lisa Freeman said the university would opt out of the fall sports season due to health and safety concerns of athletes, a Stadium report said citing sources. Freeman is a former research scientist from the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
The MAC had 11 games scheduled against Big Ten opponents in 2020, causing a combined financial hit of $10.5 million when they were canceled.
MAC fall sports teams will still be allowed to practice in adherence with NCAA, state and local guidelines, according to NIU. “Rigorous testing” of athletes will remain in place.
Frazier said the athletic department had to “move resources around” and receive help from donors to supply at least two or three tests per athlete since they returned to campus for voluntary summer workouts.
But even the most extensive testing, he said, isn’t necessarily enough.
“Once you test, that’s one thing,” Frazier said. “You still have to react if the individual has the virus or not. Here’s the bottom line: We don’t have a vaccine. We can test til the cows come home but we cannot prevent, we cannot stabilize once an individual does have COVID because we don’t know all of the effects long and short term. This comes down to a safeguard.”
A fall season had the potential for logistical nightmares too.
“Would we be profusely starting and stopping?” Frazier asked. “Would we be having other individuals infected by this and we couldn’t safeguard?”
NIU volleyball, women’s cross country and men’s and women’s soccer, as well as the non-championship segments of the men’s and women’s golf and men’s and women’s tennis competitions, are the other fall sports.
Huskies football coach Thomas Hammock said open lines of communication with athletes throughout the summer made the news easier for players to digest.
“We tried to stress, regardless of what happens, nothing really changes as far as the things we’re doing keeping you guys safe and making sure we have a safe an environment,” he said. “
When you start talking about traveling and different things involved, the MAC made the right decision. I think they felt confident we’ve kept them abreast as the situation continued to progress. There wasn’t shock.”
There have been nearly 5 million positive /COVID-19/ cases nationally since the outbreak / began/ and more than 160,000 Americans have died, according to the CDC.
More than 90 college football teams have had at least one athlete test positive for COVID-19.