FBS soccer schools are marching towards an attempt to play college football in the fall. At brand-name schools across the country, they bring players back to campus, institute COVID-19 testing regimes, and discover ways to isolate, quarantine, and trace contracts after players are diagnosed with the virus.
In the smallest schools across the country, the same drive toward soccer in the fall is starting to fade. On Friday, Morehouse College in Atlanta announced that it will cancel the soccer and cross country seasons for the fall.
Morehouse, a Division II school and one of the country’s best-known historically black universities, is believed to be the first scholarship team to announce that it will not play in the fall. There have also been a handful of HBCU games that have been canceled, including a game in Memphis between Tennessee State and Jackson State known as the Southern Heritage Classic.
Morehouse athletic director Javarro Edwards told Yahoo Sports that the school’s decision was based primarily on safety. After studying the level of attention that the NFL and NCAA Power Five schools were providing to their athletes, Morehouse officials concluded that they could not do the same.
“We are leaders in many different ways,” Edwards said in a phone interview on Friday night. “We believe we would also lead the pack in this. The health and safety of our students is what is important. We are not afraid to say it. “
Morehouse may well end up setting trends among soccer scholarship programs in the way the Ivy League was about to cancel its basketball tournament in the spring.
Division III Bowdoin College also announced a cancellation of its fall sports this week. Some FCS schools have started adjusting their schedules to be played later in the fall. With COVID numbers rising again across the country this week, will ads like Morehouse’s be common?
In this Friday, April 12, 2019 photo, people enter the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta. (AP Photo / Mike Stewart)
Morehouse plays in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with schools like Clark Atlanta, Tuskegee, and Savannah State. SIAC Commissioner Gregory Moore told Yahoo Sports in an email that the pandemic has “illuminated significant disparities” of schools trying to navigate the pandemic’s economy.
“Unfortunately, the pandemic has exposed the by-product of racial, class, and economic inequality,” said Moore. Similarly, within the context of intercollegiate sports, there is a significant class divide between schools and leagues that have significant media rights agreements and those that do not. As a consequence, limited resource institutions in general and many HBCUs in particular face greater challenges as they attempt to navigate this post-Covid-19 landscape. ”
Those differences have long manifested themselves in areas like coach salaries, stadium size, and facility square footage. What is becoming evident in the midst of this pandemic is that healthcare will also be a divider in college sports.
“We want to make sure that the same level of care is received by young men in Clemson, Alabama and Michigan,” said Edwards. “Our student athletes are simply important.”
Edwards added: “The reality is that everything is tied to spending. For us, the driver really was how we are going to provide this higher level of care. “
Are HBCUs and least-funded programs across the country looking at similar destinations? Edwards noted that “our population” in Morehouse is “more vulnerable” because the “African American population is more susceptible to the worst parts of COVID.” (The Guardian reported that black Americans are three times more likely to die from COVID than white Americans.)
Commissioner of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, Jacqie McWilliams, told Yahoo Sports on Friday that her league has made no decision on canceling fall sports. She said there is a focus within the HBCU league on playing conference games, but there is no directive to cancel non-league games.
The CIAA includes Division II schools such as Winston-Salem State, Bowie State, and Virginia Union. Williams predicted that testing costs will affect all schools below the FBS level and that schedules could become fluid. “I think it will affect everyone [smaller] schools and middle schools, “he said in a telephone interview.” If you are not at those conferences that have a television deal that helps your income, it will be a challenge. ”
At the FCS level, SWAC Commissioner Charles McClelland acknowledged in a phone interview that his league, which includes Alabama State, Grambling and Prairie View A&M, is in a geographic “hot spot” of COVID-19 positive testing.
“I do not anticipate that Morehouse will be the last institution to make that call,” he said in a telephone interview. “From SWAC’s point of view, the health and safety of our student athletes, coaches, and constituents will be priority number 1. We will have to make some difficult decisions.”
For Morehouse, Friday was a difficult day for coaches and administrators. They had a call with the players to break the news to them. All scholarships will be honored, including those from incoming players. But the players who had been training for six months still faced a difficult reality, especially those who played their final season.
“It is devastating,” said Edwards. “I can only imagine what it is like for a young man from 18 to 22 years old. But they understand what is at stake here and their parents understand what is at stake here. Initially they took it hard, and I took it hard for them. “
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