Another game lost: Who will the CCU football team play in 2020? The options are dwindling
Coastal Carolina’s 2020 schedule, and much of the college football season, is unraveling in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Coastal has stated it’s a willing participant, but it may have a hard time finding teams outside of the Sun Belt Conference to play — if it plays a season at all.
The Sun Belt announced this week it will establish eight league games for each of its 10 member teams and allow each team to play an additional four non-conference games.
But it’s conceivable – even likely – that the Chanticleers won’t play any of the four teams they were scheduled to play outside the conference – South Carolina, Eastern Michigan, Duquesne and Kansas.
South Carolina and Eastern Michigan have officially been canceled. Kansas and Duquesne are doubtful, and it has been established Kansas won’t play the Chants on the road in Conway as scheduled.
Replacements will be difficult to find as more and more teams become unavailable and the viability of a fall college football season continues to diminish.
On Saturday, the Mid-American Conference, of which Eastern Michigan is a member, announced it has canceled its fall athletic season and intends to move its football season to the spring.
It’s the first of the 10 conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision to cancel or postpone fall football, though several Football Championship Subdivision conferences have done so, and it appears the FCS will not hold a playoff or championship in the fall. NCAA Divisions II and III have officially canceled their fall championships.
“We’re preparing, hoping that we’ll have an opponent here sometime soon,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said Friday of the team’s opening date on Sept. 5. The Chants began their fall preseason camp Friday. “We’ve talked to several schools but there’s nothing concrete right now.”
It was already going to be difficult for Coastal to find a game against a team from the Power Five conferences after they announced exclusive schedules over the past few weeks, and now FCS teams, including Duquesne, are unlikely to play this fall.
Because too many conferences have postponed or canceled fall athletics, capped by the 13-team Big Sky’s announcement Thursday that it intends to move its football season to the spring, the FCS level won’t reach the threshold needed to hold a championship.
The NCAA Board of Governors allowed each division to determine if it will hold championships for fall sports. But among its mandates to the divisions is a requirement that at least 50 percent of eligible teams in a particular sport must participate in order for a championship to be held.
Conferences containing more than half of the FCS’s teams won’t be sponsoring games this fall.
Among the Group of Five FBS conferences, the MAC won’t play in the fall, Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference have joined the Sun Belt with eight league games and up to four non-conference games, and the Mountain West has settled on eight league games and up to two non-conference games.
To complicate matters, conferences have staggered start times for their seasons, and the Sun Belt has yet to establish when its league games will be played.
“There’s still a lot of what-ifs out there right now,” Chadwell said Friday.
A deteriorating schedule
Coastal has been trying to fill the season-opening date of Sept. 5 since its scheduled game with South Carolina was canceled on July 30 when the SEC eliminated all non-conference games, and its second game of the season against Eastern Michigan was canceled Saturday with the MAC’s decision.
The Power Five conferences have made it very difficult to schedule one of their teams, as the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC are playing conference-only schedules, and the ACC and Big 12 are allowing each of their teams to play one non-conference game with restrictions. The ACC is requiring the game to be played in the home state of its team, and the Big 12 is requiring it to be a home game.
Kansas of the Big 12 was scheduled to play the Chants at Brooks Stadium on Sept. 26, which would have been the first visit to Conway by a team from a Power Five conference.
It seems possible the Kansas game can be salvaged. The Chants and Jayhawks are scheduled to meet next year in Lawrence, Kansas, so the teams could conceivably trade home games.
CCU was Kansas’ only road opponent among its three originally scheduled non-conference games, as the Jayhawks were scheduled to host FCS program Southern Illinois of the Missouri Valley Football Conference on Aug. 29 and Boston College of the ACC on Sept. 19. Both of those games have been canceled by conferences’ decisions.
The Big 12 announced that it anticipates a start to league games sometime between mid- and late-September, with the expectation that non-conference contests are played prior to those. So the Chants and Jayhawks would have to play early.
“We are working with the Big 12 Conference on an updated 2020 football schedule and will share that publicly when it is finalized,” Kansas Associate AD for Public Relations Dan Beckler said in an email to The Sun News on Thursday.
Duquesne was mulling playing the 2020 season as an FCS independent after its Northeast Conference announced last week the indefinite suspension of all fall athletic competitions. But the apparent cancellation of the FCS playoffs in the fall makes that seem unlikely.
Duquesne was still considering a fall football season as of Tuesday, according to an email to The Sun News, but Dukes football representatives could not be reached Saturday.
“Our focus is to try to preserve a competitive season this academic year for our student athletes, but only when that can be done with the proper health and safety conditions in place. That will be dictated by multiple entities,” Duquesne athletics director Dave Harper said after the NEC’s decision.
In the FCS, the Missouri Valley Football Conference, Colonial Athletic, Mid-Eastern Athletic, Patriot, Pioneer, Southwestern Athletic and Northeast conferences have all canceled or postponed their fall football seasons, totaling 68 of the FCS’ 127 programs. FCS conferences the Southern, Big South and MEAC all feature multiple teams in the Carolinas that would be potential games for CCU.
The MVFC, which includes North Dakota State, a winner of eight of the past nine FCS national titles, has joined the Big Sky in supporting a spring season and playoffs.
“I think everybody is trying to see what FCS is going to do because you’re got a lot of them that are available to play,” Chadwell said on Friday.
The difficult financial realities of attempting to play football during a global pandemic is contributing to the schedule uncertainty. CCU was going to make $1.4 million for playing USC and is scheduled to pay Duquesne $300,000, according to CCU Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations Kevin Davis.
There is a long history in Division I football of teams paying schools from a lesser conference or subdivision a stipend for a home game.
“The issue really is a Power Five can only play a certain amount, so everybody’s losing that money,” Chadwell said. “So the [Group of Five] doesn’t have a lot of money to play the FCS, and the FCS is looking for money. So I think it’s just really a waiting game. There are a few teams out there that everybody is trying to jockey for [Sept.] 5th and certain dates.”
CCU’S ORIGINAL 2020 FOOTBALL SCHEDULE
Sept. 5 at South Carolina (canceled)
Sept. 12 at Eastern Michigan (canceled)
Sept. 19 vs. Duquesne
Sept. 26 vs. Kansas (canceled)
Oct. 3 vs. Arkansas State
Oct. 17 at Louisiana
Oct. 24 vs. Georgia Southern
Oct. 29 at Georgia State
Nov. 7 vs. South Alabama
Nov. 14 at Troy
Nov. 21 vs. Appalachian State
Nov. 28 at Texas State
This story was originally published August 8, 2020 at 2:24 PM.
