NCAA President Mark Emmert announced all fall championships have been canceled in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday.
The decision will affect Texas State’s men’s and women’s cross country, soccer and volleyball teams. Texas State Football is unaffected as a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), which the NCAA does not have oversight of.
The NCAA Board of Governors set specific requirements last week that schools and conferences had to meet in order to conduct fall sports in the preseason, regular season and postseason. One of the requirements stipulated that “if 50% or more of eligible teams in a particular sport in a division cancel their fall season, there will be no fall NCAA championship in that sport in that division.”
“We cannot now, at this point, have fall NCAA championships, because there’s not enough schools participating,” Emmert said. “Sadly, tragically, that’s going to be the case this fall, full-stop.”
Emmert expressed optimism that fall championships could be postponed to the spring, though winter and spring championships are currently the main priority since they were already canceled earlier this year. The NCAA Division I Council recommended to the Board of Directors on Wednesday that any fall athlete who plays in 50% or less of their competitions should get an extra year of eligibility. Emmert also said athletes must be allowed to opt out of competition and remain on scholarship if their team does play this fall.
“The point is to try and preserve eligibility, make sure kids don’t lose scholarships,” Emmert said. “If we think about what’s going on this fall, rather than thinking about is as a canceled or a lost fall, let’s think of it as a pivot toward winter and spring. Let’s use the fall to focus on the physical and mental health, the academic success of our student-athletes.”
The Big Ten, Pac-12, Mid-American, Mountain West and all Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) conferences have chosen to cancel or postpone competition in addition to Old Dominion, New Mexico State, UConn and UMass, leaving 76 of a possible 130 FBS teams still with plans to move forward with the fall season.
The Sun Belt announced its plans to begin the football season over Labor Day weekend on Aug. 4, but has not announced any official updates on its plans since schools began to cancel their seasons. Texas State Football currently has 10 opponents scheduled, beginning with SMU inside Bobcat Stadium on Sept. 5 at 6 p.m.
