NCAA President Mark Emmert: No Fall 2020 Championships
It seemed inevitable, but now it's official.
NCAA President Mark Emmert, in a video posted by the organization's official Twitter, said that there cannot be 2020 Fall NCAA championships because of the amount of schools and conferences who have postponed competition until 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
"We cannot now, at this point, have fall NCAA championships because there's not enough schools participating," Emmert said. "The Board of Governors also said: 'look, if you don't have half of the schools playing in a sport, you can't have a legitimate championship'. So, we can't in any Division I NCAA Championship sport now, which is everything other than FBS football, that goes on in the fall."
This affects eight NCAA-sanctioned sports: men's & women cross country, men's & women's soccer, women's volleyball, men's water polo, women's field hockey, and football.
However the important distinction here is that this has no bearing on the College Football Playoff, as the NCAA does not run the CFP or bowl games at the FBS level. The CFP Selection Committee announced Thursday that it would still be moving forward with the CFP process, even with the Big Ten & Pac-12 postponing fall competition.
An official statement has yet to be released from the NCAA, but it would be a formality more so than anything else. According to NCAA policy, fall championships will be canceled in sports without at least 50% of members participating. As of noon on Thursday, six hours before Emmert made his statement, all eight D1 fall sports crossed the 50% cancellation threshold.
For Louisville specifically, this means that the men's & women cross country, men's & women's soccer, women's volleyball and women's field hockey teams will not be competing for a national championship. The University does not field a men's water polo team.
However in theory, they could still hold a regular season. Like FBS football, the NCAA does not have control over conference tournaments or conference-only seasons.
Emmert also did not rule out the possibility of the fall championships being played out in the spring.
"If schools and conferences want to move forward and more than half of them want to do it, and that's the indication right now, let's do it," he said. "We can use the fall to keep kids healthy, keep them engaged with their athletic departments and coaches, focus on their academics, work with them, let them practice and then let them compete at that time."
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