Coastal Carolina in the process of securing a football game against a Power 5 opponent
It appears Coastal Carolina has secured at least one non-conference football game for the 2020 season, and it will be an opponent from a Power 5 conference.
Kansas and Coastal are scheduled play on Sept. 12 in Lawrence, Kansas, according to the athletic director of a school that was scheduled to play the Jayhawks in September before the Big 12 altered the Jayhawks’ schedule because of the coronavirus pandemic.
CCU and Kansas have yet to announce the game as of Thursday afternoon, though CCU Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations Kevin Davis confirmed the teams are discussing the game. “At this time, we are in the process of ongoing negotiations with Kansas to play there on Sept. 12,” Davis said.
Southern Illinois Athletic Director Liz Jarnigan told The Southern Illinoisan on Wednesday that her team was out and CCU was in on Kansas’ schedule.
“In order to play us, one of the things that Kansas had done was eliminate their game against Coastal Carolina, because they were limited to just one home game,” Jarnigan told The Southern Illinoisan. “When Coastal Carolina lost the MAC game, they came back to Kansas and asked to flip-flop the home-and-home series with them, so that’s what they’re doing.”
Kansas athletic director Jeff Long announced during a video call with local media Wednesday that KU would play a non-conference game Sept. 12 and it would not be against SIU. He would not identify the opponent, citing a verbal agreement but not a signed contract.
Kansas 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.
But the Big 12 is allowing just one non-conference game for its members this season, and it must be at home.
Since the teams were scheduled to play in Lawrence next season, they can conceivably exchange home games and play at Brooks Stadium in 2021.
The Chants’ Sun Belt Conference announced earlier this month it intends to play an eight-game conference schedule this fall, though the dates of the games have not been released, and is allowing its members to play up to four non-conference games.
Coastal has been trying to fill the dates left open by the cancellation of all four of its originally scheduled non-conference games.
The Chants were scheduled to travel to South Carolina on Sept. 5, but the SEC is not allowing non-conference games, and travel to Eastern Michigan on Sept. 12, but the Mid-American Conference has postponed the season in the hopes of playing in the spring.
Coastal’s Football Championship Subdivision opponent on Sept. 19, Duquesne, has postponed football for the fall, according to Davis.
Duquesne had been mulling playing the 2020 season as an FCS independent after its Northeast Conference announced on July 29 the indefinite suspension of all fall athletic competitions.
Then the FCS playoffs were apparently canceled because the subdivision will fall short of a threshold needed to hold a championship.
The NCAA Board of Governors is allowing each division to determine if it will hold championships for fall sports, and Divisions II and III quickly canceled. But among the board’s 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.
Southern Illinois’ Missouri Valley Football Conference is among them, but SIU has an agreement with the league to play three non-conference games this fall and league games in the spring, so it was attempting to keep its game with Kansas.
CCU was Kansas’ only road opponent among its three scheduled non-conference games, as the Jayhawks were slated to host Southern Illinois on Aug. 29 — as a replacement for a canceled game against New Hampshire — and Boston College of the ACC on Sept. 19. The ACC has released a schedule that allows its teams to play one non-conference game, but it must be played in the home state of its team, so Kansas could not play BC.
While some teams continue to jockey and scramble for games, the entire fall college football fall season is teetering on a dismantling.
At the FBS level, Power 5 conferences the Pac-12 and Big 10 have postponed their seasons with the intention of playing in the fall, as have Group of Five conferences the MAC and Mountain West. The Big 12, ACC and SEC have all released schedules with one or no non-conference games permitted, and Conference USA, the Sun Belt and American Athletic conferences are allowing full 12-game schedules — for now.
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 2:51 PM.
