Ivy League To Announce Decision On Football July 8, Source Says Spring Schedule Is ‘98 Percent’ Likely

The Ivy League was the first conference to cancel its postseason basketball tournament back in March.

Now the Ivies could be on the brink of another groundbreaking decision in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The League plans to announce its plans for fall sports on July 8, with several league sources saying the Ivies plan to move football to the spring.

“If I was placing a bet, I think it’s 98 percent, 99 percent likely that this thing is moving to the spring for the fall sports based on everything I’ve heard,” one Ivy League source said.

“The financial ramifications of whatever decision they’ve made, you need to have plenty of time to start working on those things. It’s not like they’re going to wake up the morning of the 8th and go with something. The decision’s been made.”

TMG Sports first reported that the Ivy League was considering two options, one being forgoing the entire fall in favor of a seven-game, conference-only spring season that would begin in April and end in mid-May.

The League is also considering opening the season in late September with a seven-game schedule against only conference opponents. The Ivy League normally plays a 10-game schedule that tentatively begins this season on Sept. 19.

Multiple Ivy League coaches said they believe the conference will go with the first option, with one assistant basketball coach saying he’d be “shocked” if they play football in the fall.

“I honestly think the best chance for basketball (and all sports) would be to push everything to second semester and hope that we had improvements in medicine, testing, vaccine, etc.,” the assistant basketball coach said.

Williams College
WMB
, a Division III school in the NESCAC, announced Monday that while it will have students on campus in the fall, it wouldn’t hold fall sports. Bowdoin College, a D-3 school in Maine, made a similar announcement.

One Ivy League assistant football coach said the Ivy League and NESCAC could have similar outcomes in terms of abandoning the fall.

“The Ivy League could say something [about playing in the fall] but one school could say, ‘We’re not coming back again,’ and then our sports would not be able to participate,” the football assistant said.

“So the spring, if that’s the direction they would go with it, allows everybody to participate, not letting one school dictate the fall.”