Ivy League Postpones All Sports Until At Least January 2021

The Ivy League announced on July 8th that all its NCAA fall sports will not be played during the 2020 fall semester, and won’t resume until at least January 1st of 2021, due to the continued coronavirus pandemic. Athletes will be allowed to train and workout in small groups, health conditions permitting, and they will not lose a year of NCAA eligibility. The league will decide the fate of spring sports and whether or not they will move fall sports to the spring at a later date. It has been pointed out that the problem with running both fall and spring sports at the same time is that common training facilities and playing fields will have to somehow be shared, a big logistical problem.

Presumably, if the Ivy League did play football in the spring, it would be only against in conference competition. Harvard, for example, had seven conference games along with non conference games against Georgetown, Holy Cross, and Lafayette. The Ivy League is the first Division I conference to call off fall sports–the Division III Centennial Conference, made up of schools in Maryland and Pennsylvania–called off its fall sports programs on July 7th. Some other individual D3 schools have decided not to have fall sports as well.

This also means that winter sports–notably basketball and hockey, both of which start their seasons well before January 1st–will be delayed. Hockey is an interesting situation. Six of the 12 Ivy League schools play Division I college hockey, each of which has both men’s and women’s teams. There are no college Ivy league conferences; the schools compete in the men’s and women’s ECAC, along with six non Ivy League schools. This will throw a wrench into the leagues’ schedules.

The Coronavirus just isn’t going away and the clock is ticking for a decision by other collegiate conferences and schools about their participation in sports this fall. Since there won’t be a Harvard-Yale football game this fall, here’s some highlights from the 2019 game, won by Yale 50-43 in the second overtime: