Big Ten Announces Football Teams Will Forfeit Games Due To Covid-19

Big 10 Officials have drawn a line in the sand when it comes to teams not being able to play because of a Covid-19 outbreak.

Last year was a complete scheduling nightmare for league officials as they tried to keep games from being cancelled. The Big 10 put a minimum games played contingency in place, but event that had to be adjusted toward the end of the season. Now the league is standing firm behind a new policy that will force any team that cannot play due to Covid-19 outbreaks, to forfeit that game.

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The league announced the new policy in a press release today saying,

If a team is unable to participate in a scheduled Conference competition due to COVID-19 and as a result the competition is unable to occur on the calendar day on which it is scheduled, the competition shall be considered a forfeit by the team unable to participate and shall not be rescheduled.  In such case, the team unable to participate shall be assessed a “loss,” its opponent a “win,” and Conference standings shall be adjusted accordingly.

Imagine how much worse the season would have been last year if every Covid postponed game would have been an automatic loss. There might not have been a team with a winning record in the entire conference!

There were many times last year that two teams scheduled to play each other both had to postpone because they both had Covid outbreaks. The conference has put in a contingency rule if that type of situation were to come up this year.

If both of the two competing teams are unable to participate in a scheduled Conference competition due to COVID-19 and as a result the competition is unable to occur on the calendar day on which it is scheduled, and is unable to be rescheduled, the competition shall be considered a “no contest.”

There are a ton of other scenarios where this policy could, and most likely will need to be, adjusted based on how the season is going.

I just know that neither Michigan or Michigan State are predicted to be very good this year, so things could even uglier depending on how the virus is contained.