I have seen people across the Internet stating that one idea to get College Baseball going for the 2021 season is to have “Regional” schedules with teams from certain areas facing off.
This idea seems to make sense if the entire country isn’t in the middle of a worldwide pandemic with pockets available to play. One way to look at the exploding COVID-19 numbers across the country is the fact College Basketball which is supposed to start play later this afternoon has seen cancellations almost hourly from major schools to low mid-majors.
Let’s take a look at College Hockey which is currently on the third week of play in some areas of the country with many squads still not played a game yet. Hockey East, which is a “New England” based league, started play on November 20th. The conference put out a schedule on November 11th with six games scheduled on the men’s side and eight games on the women’s side on the opening weekend.
Guess what happened? There was a total of two men’s games played (UMass-Amherst and UConn) and six women’s games (Maine at Holy Cross while UNH and BC, Providence and UConn played home and home series). So how did all this mess happen? Vermont canceled all athletics until December 18th on November 15th while BC-UNH Men’s series got a inconclusive positive test on November 20th about five hours before face-off to start their season. That same test ended up coming back positive thus canceling their second matchup on Saturday.
On Monday this week, Hockey East announced that the PC-BC men’s hockey series which was supposed to take November 27th and 28th would not take place so BC will be taking on UMass-Amherst instead. UMass-Amherst was expected to take on Vermont in the original schedule that was announced on November 11th.
The news on Tuesday this week was that Northeastern and Maine’s Athletic Departments decided to cancel Athletics until at least December 18th in Northeastern’s case and Maine until December 8th.
So now this upcoming men’s hockey weekend instead of having eight games scheduled will only have two games both between BC and UMass-Amherst.
Do we really want to start doing this sort of rescheduling in College Baseball this spring? Is it really worth the time? We have not gotten this virus under control yet to be holding intercollegiate athletics right now.
Do you disagree?
Leave your comments below or what should be done for College Baseball to open safely.
Top Image “The Season Begins” by Phil Roeder is licensed under CC BY 2.0
