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Report: Ivy League Expected to Push All Fall Sports to Spring 2021

The Ivy League is likely to push the upcoming football season to the spring of 2021, The Athletic reported Monday.

On Wednesday, the conference is expected to officially announce a plan to push all fall sports to the spring semester, with implications of the decision potentially having a widespread impact. Recall, though it seems like a lifetime ago, that the Ivy League was the first to cancel its men’s basketball postseason tournament in March, with top conferences – like the Pac-12 – following suit shortly thereafter.

NCAA Division I Fall Sports:

  • Men’s & Women’s Cross Country
  • Women’s Field Hockey
  • Men’s Football
  • Men’s and Women’s Soccer
  • Women’s Volleyball
  • Men’s Water Polo

The league also canceled all spring sports on March 11 and left it up to schools to determine if they would attend remaining winter sports championships, including in swimming, before those events were also canceled.

The Ivy League competes in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) of college football, formerly known as 1-AA. The Ivy League has a self-imposed restriction on participation in the FCS college football playoff.

Princeton, Brown, and Harvard sponsor NCAA Division I men’s water polo programs, though they compete in the NWCP Conference, and not in the Ivy League.

“My suspicion is that the majority of presidents in the FBS are uncomfortable with the notion of playing football this fall but for various reasons don’t want to be the first to step out and say that,” one Power 5 administrator told The Athletic. “So, more than anything else, that decision provides the cover they need. I expect it’ll be a big domino.”

Harvard and Princeton announced Monday that they will only invite students back to campus in groups segmented throughout the academic year. At Harvard, up to 40% of the undergrad population will be allowed on campus at once, with all freshmen coming in the fall and all seniors on-campus in the spring. Regardless of where students are based, however, they will take classes entirely online. At Princeton, freshmen and juniors will be allowed on campus in the fall, while sophomores and seniors will be there in the spring.

Swimming’s most notable Ivy League attendee, Dean Farris, told SwimSwam in May that he planned to return to school next year following a would-be Olympic redshirt season.

Around the nation, additional schools are slowly releasing their plans for the fall. Some are opting for hybrid (part online, part in-person) formats, or to host classes entirely online. However, a new wrinkle has emerged from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s announcement Monday that international students can’t remain in the U.S. if their fall semesters are entirely online.

Last week, USC announced that it would move undergraduate instruction primarily online for the fall, save labs, studios, research courses, and selected others requiring in-person meetings; UCLA is taking a similar approach. The California State system announced in May that most of its campuses will remain closed for the fall semester.

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HuntleyJones
4 years ago

Fall sports officially canceled, with no certainty that they will be postponed to spring 2021. Swimming cannot begin until the start of 2021.

Bossanova
4 years ago

‘member when Trump said it will all just go away? Lmao

HISWIMCOACH
Reply to  Bossanova
4 years ago

BossaNova, I’m still old enough to remember when trump sent the Covid patients in New York in to nursing homes.

Clearly, this is all his fault.

Saw Guerra
4 years ago

Why do we care what the IVy League does? They are going to be canceled….

Harvard: Harvard students slept in beds and ate meals prepared by slaves, and many grew up to be prominent slave-holders and leaders in early America
Yale: named for slave-trader and merchant Elihu Yale.
Brown: The Brown family were slave traders and often brutal ones. On one voyage aboard the slave ship Sally, 109 of 196 captured Africans died.

Corn Pop
Reply to  Saw Guerra
4 years ago

League of Lizard People.

Eisenheim
4 years ago

Damn you, COVID.

HuntleyJones
4 years ago

Just one thing to note: Ivy Leauge football teams don’t ever qualify or play in the FCS playoffs, they have a self-imposed restriction to not play in the tournament.

Vanilla Gorilla
4 years ago

These comments….lol. The Anti Vaxxer Quarterly and ThoughtsFromBobsBasement.com say the virus is totally under control and not to worry. Pffft

HISWIMCOACH
Reply to  Vanilla Gorilla
4 years ago

Good luck being continually being dominated by your media and government. Plenty of very smart people including Nobel prize winner Michael Leavitt think that we have it under control.

But Americans just aren’t good consumers of media and actually think CNN, MSNBC and NYT (or evening Vox or The Atlantic) are reporting news and don’t realize they are propaganda machines.

PowerPlay
Reply to  HISWIMCOACH
4 years ago

What does the ‘Hi” represent?

Vanilla Gorilla
Reply to  HISWIMCOACH
4 years ago

It’s worked out really well so far, my life is a success by any objective measure. Denying science is dangerous, the virus doesn’t care about your politics. The earth is round, vaccines work, climate change is happening. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community is concerned about America’s inability to control the virus spread. I recognize arguing with QAnon types is a waste of time, but I hope the young minds you are trying to influence will read this article from Forbes. A right leaning and credible news organization:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/04/01/the-covid-19-pandemic-exposes-the-harm-of-denying-scientific-facts/#132c7c363aab

Theswammer
Reply to  HISWIMCOACH
4 years ago

Wait….so we can’t believe or trust in the multiple doctors and head of hospitals that are coming out with this information about COVID but you’re allowed to believe that Leavitt is a good source because it feeds what you want to believe?

You realize how backwards that is right? You’re feeding into the same social media problem you’re bringing up to debate our side. It just so happens to feed what you want to believe.

HISWIMCOACH
Reply to  Theswammer
4 years ago

Meh, leavitt is but one example of highly respected scientists who disagree with the approach. Best of luck to you.
https://reason.com/2020/07/01/covid-19-herd-immunity-is-much-closer-than-antibody-tests-suggest-say-2-new-studies/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Or we have Dr Sikora from the UK:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/1277874783653441536

DrSwimPhil
Reply to  Theswammer
4 years ago

To be fair, Levitt is the one that’s pretty much nailed his predictions for many countries, and significantly better than those models that have driven the lockdown hysteria. He’s not “hiding” how he comes about those predictions, either. He puts it all out there.

Anonymous
4 years ago

I’m hearing talk at the high school level as well to move football to the Spring and have baseball be in the Fall. Less contact with baseball than football and you still get both in. Look around and listen in at your own state and school district level and you will hear a lot of the same ideas being tossed around.

Brandi
Reply to  Anonymous
4 years ago

I agree with this! Evaluating postponements BY SPORT makes much more sense than doing a blanket ruling by season. Not all sports inherently have the same risks of exposure. There’s much less contact in NCAA sports like cross-country, baseball & softball, golf, tennis, swimming, bowling, gymnastics, fencing, rifle, and skiing. These 2020-21 seasons should not be postponed! Let them compete!!

Theswammer
Reply to  Brandi
4 years ago

It’s not that simple Brandi, unfortunately. If students aren’t on campus and online learning is happening, there’s a really good chance that those sports aren’t happening. It’s putting into question the “amateur” status and why put athletes on campus if you don’t believe it’s safe for the general student? If Professional teams can’t figure out how to do this safely, why would you put the same sport athletes in that situation?

Blanket ruling makes it easy to blanket waiver everything and move forward.

Armchair
Reply to  Theswammer
4 years ago

Nearly all schools will have students on campus. Some won’t have all of their students, to be sure, but the vast majority will have students.

Anonymous
4 years ago

Is there anyone on the Cross Country team that isn’t on the track team as well? If XC is moved to Spring, will the athletes have to choose, or will they include XC as part of the track meet and just use alternate days for the Steeplechase, mile and 2 mile races from the track to a XC course? Sort of like the distance races on one day and the shorter distances on others as they do for swimming? Usually the XC coaches are part of the track coaching squads as well. Did anybody ask them about moving it?

About Torrey Hart

Torrey Hart

Torrey is from Oakland, CA, and majored in media studies and American studies at Claremont McKenna College, where she swam distance freestyle for the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team. Outside of SwimSwam, she has bylines at Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, and The Student Life newspaper.

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