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Late on Monday, reports came that the Mountain West had decided to postpone the 2020 fall sports season and those reports were later confirmed by the Mountain West Conference Twitter account.
— Mountain West (@MountainWest) August 10, 2020
The Mountain West became the second Division I FBS conference to postpone the 2020 fall sports season, following the decision made by the Mid American Conference (MAC) to postpone the 2020 fall sports season. The postponement of fall sports includes sports such as Aggies football, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s golf and men’s and women’s track and field. The postponement of fall sports comes just days after the Mountain West announced schedule changes in preparation for the fall sports season.
“We were hopeful we could carefully and responsibly conduct competition as originally scheduled with essential protocols in place, however, numerous external factors and unknowns outside our control made this difficult decision necessary,” Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said.
Utah State Athletic Director John Hartwell released a statement following the news from the Mountain West.
Mountain West Postpones 2020 Football & Fall Sports
— Utah State Athletics (@USUAthletics) August 10, 2020
Release ➡️ https://t.co/eTmCChP4vh pic.twitter.com/XvDxkLKndf
It is unclear what the Mountain West plans to do with the fall sports season. As of right now, the sports are postponed indefinitely until a plan is made. One option may be to play fall sports in the Spring as the MAC has announced they will do this, but there are a lot of logistically problems with moving numerous sports into the Spring, such as college basketball conflicting with college football and there is no guarantee that conditions will be better in the Spring either. The Mountain West could even decide to not go forward with a fall sports season in the Spring due to the sharp turn around of having to play in the fall again with limited recovery time, especially for a physically demanding sport such as football.
Before this point the Aggies had already lost big games against Washington State and Washington and had already delayed the start of fall camp due to the delayed start to the season. More news to come on any plans the Mountain West makes for the future.