The first few dominoes of college sports have fallen as two conferences of private schools cancelled all fall sports this week.
The Ivy League decided that it wouldn't play any sports until at least Jan. 1, according to several reports on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Division III Centennial Conference said that it was cancelling the fall football season, and suspending all fall sports until at least October.
This is basically what happened at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, when the Ivy League canceled its basketball tournament and the NESCAC canceled all spring sports. At the time, both were criticized as premature worrywarts; the rest of American sports followed them eventually.
Both leagues are open to a spring 2021 football season, if the virus allows it. The Ivy League schools _ Penn, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown and Columbia _ are in the Football Championship Subdivision and Division I for the rest of their sports.
The following Division III schools have also announced they will not compete in the fall, according to the AP: Amherst, Bowdoin, Claremont McKenna, Grinnell, MIT, Morehouse, Mount Holyoke, Pratt Institute, RPI, Sarah Lawrence, Smith, The College of New Jersey, Texas College, UM-Dearborn, UMass-Boston, Wellesley and Williams.
