CU Buffs, Pac-12 will not play football this fall

COVID-19 did what even two World Wars could not on Tuesday: Close CU Buffs athletic leagues for the better part of a calendar year.

The Pac-12 announced Tuesday that all sports, including soccer in the fall and basketball for men and women in the winter, will not begin competition until January 1, 2021, due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors today have reached the decision that we feel best for the health and safety of our student-athletes,” CU Chancellor Phil DiStefano said in a statement released by the university.

“We know that the postponement of the competition is painful for our fans, alumni, donors and, above all, our student-athletes who have worked so hard to prepare for the season under very difficult conditions.”

The decision was announced after a Tuesday meeting of the Pac-12 CEO group, a consortium of league presidents and chancellors. The group voted unanimously to shut down all sports in 2020 because of the health risks related to COVID-19.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott told a news conference Tuesday, “and we have not answered all the questions now.”

Tuesday’s announcement puts the start of new CU football coach Karl Dorrell’s debut season in limbo, though league officials say they hope it will be held in the spring. It will also significantly delay the start of the season for longtime Buffs men basketball coach Tad Boyle.

“Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble,” Scott said in a prepared statement. “We will continue the situation and if circumstances change, we will be ready to explore all options to play the affected sports in the new calendar year.

“We know this is a difficult day for our student-athletes, and our hearts go out to them and their families. We have made it clear that all of their scholarships are guaranteed, and that we as a conference strongly encourage the NCAA to give them an additional year of eligibility. ”

The Pac-12 decision falls in tandem with its longest-running Power 5 conference partner, the Big Ten, whose chief executives also voted Tuesday to move football out of the fall.

The Buffs are joining CSU, Air Force, Wyoming, UNC and Mines as local football programs for colleges that are likely to adopt a spring 2021 schedule.

The Mountain West, of which the Rams, Falcons and Cowboys are members, announced Monday afternoon that football was kicking off in the fall, and became the second FBS conference to do so.

The schedule change means that 2020 will be the first calendar year at CU without football since 1889. It is the first time since the school’s intercollegiate athletics program was established in 1890 that a full fall season has been postponed.

It will also be the last launch of a Buffs football campaign in program history. The 1918 season, when an influenza pandemic was also devastated with schedules and mass gatherings, lasted five matches in a three-week window of Nov. 16. Until Dec. 7.

The Pac-12’s decision to delay the start of the 2020-21 2020 winter sport went a step further than its Big Ten peers, as the latest league said it “evaluated” the conditions for those seasons would be relative to circumstances.

The CU men’s basketball team comes out of a 21-11 season and would likely be selected for the 2020 NCAA Tournament before the pandemic forced the cancellation of that event.

The Buffaloes, with the return of point guard McKinley Wright, are expected to force a berth in the iteration of the March 2021 iteration – assuming the tour can be held.

The league’s announcement Tuesday was the latest radical shift in what has become a summer of ever-shifting dates in Boulder.

Until early July, the hope was for the Buffs to open 2020 at Fort Collins on Sept. 5 in a Rocky Mountain Showdown tussle with rival CSU. On July 10, the Pac-12 announced that it had canceled all non-conference dates and proceeded with a conference schedule.