In ordinary times, last week’s announcement from the Ivy League would not even register as a blip on the radar. The message seemed simple enough. Just two sentences. A statement about a future statement.
“With return to campus protocols still being developed and introduced by Ivy League institutions, the Council of Ivy League Presidents intends to announce a final decision regarding the status of intercollegiate athletic activity for the Fall Term 2020 on July 8.
“That decision will be communicated first to Ivy League directors of athletics, coaches and student-athletes, followed by the wider Ivy League campus community, media, alumni and the public.”
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But these are not ordinary times. As the clock ticks down to Wednesday afternoon’s announcement, the rest of the NCAA will be very interested observers. One only needs to go back to earlier this year to understand why.
On March 10, the Ivy League canceled both the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments that were scheduled to be held at Harvard the following weekend due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The decision was pilloried by some as being excessive, but the next day, it was clear that it was a harbinger of what was in store across the country both for the remainder of the winter sports season, as well as the spring season.
The Harvard men’s hockey team was the next to pull the plug on its season, withdrawing from its scheduled ECAC quarterfinal series on March 11. The Ivy League also canceled the spring sports season. Within 24 hours, all conference tournaments, as well as NCAA championships, were canceled.
Four months later, the situation is eerily similar as schools are running out of time on when to make decisions regarding fall sports. For many across the country, the football season will begin Sept. 5, with teams officially beginning to hold practices on Monday, but most schools are already holding voluntary workouts.
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Last week, the Washington Post reported that with cases of coronavirus rising in the south and west, some governors hoped that the threat of a canceled college football season would encourage residents to follow public health guidelines, such as wearing masks in public.
While it won’t be confused with the SEC and the PAC-12, the Ivy League does have three of its schools located in major cities: Harvard (Cambridge/Boston), Columbia (New York City), and Penn (Philadelphia). Yale (New Haven) and Brown (Providence), are also in densely populated cities, while Cornell (Ithaca, N.Y.), Dartmouth (Hanover, N.H.), and Princeton (Princeton, N.J.) are in more rural settings.
Locally, Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern have stated they plan on reopening classrooms and residence halls to students in the fall. (Of the three, only BC has a football program, but both NU and BU have Division 1 sports in the fall as well.)
Harvard announced earlier this week that only 40 percent of undergrads will be on campus, which would seem to indicate that fall sports would not be an option in Cambridge. But none of the other Ivies have yet to set a limit on the number of students returning to campus.
One scenario reportedly being considered by schools both in and outside of the Ivy League is no sports for the rest of the calendar year. If that were to be the case, football would be a spring sport, with the Ivies eschewing nonconference games and playing just a seven-game league schedule.
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According to The Athletic, multiple coaches in the Ivy League believe that’s what will be revealed on Wednesday.
Of course, to do so brings its own issues. Fans would still likely not be allowed in the spring, at least not at full capacity, meaning a loss of revenue. That would be compounded by the additional cost of traveling while social distancing. No more players and coaches sitting next to each other on buses for road games, with athletes potentially housed one to a room when staying at a hotel on overnight trips.
To be determined later is the fate of the winter sports like basketball and hockey, which begin practice in the early fall. Some leagues are considering playing abbreviated league schedules beginning in January, and forgoing the postseason conference tournaments, letting the regular season determine who could reach the NCAA tournament.
But Wednesday’s announcement is expected to deal only with the fall sports season, which, for the Ivy League, includes football, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross-country, and volleyball. A decision on winter sports can wait and would be addressed at a later date.
Whether or not the larger conferences would be willing to postpone the football season to the spring of 2021 remains to be seen, but they learned earlier this year it would not be wise to simply dismiss a decision from the Ivy League.
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Follow Andrew Mahoney on Twitter @GlobeMahoney
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