The Patriot League will severely restrict travel for football teams during the coronavirus pandemic.
The FCS conference released the protocols for getting athletics underway on Monday, and there are some serious problems. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
The league announced that flying to games will be banned and outside of “rare exceptions, regular-season competition will exclude overnight travel.”
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As pointed out by Sports Illustrated, this rule will result in multiple non-conference games getting canceled. It’s kind of hard for Fordham to get to Hawaii if they can’t get on a plane.
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It only gets worse from there. Football players won’t even be allowed on campus prior to the rest of the student body returning.
That means practices might not even get underway until right before the season starts. All the way around, it’s an absolute disaster.
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What an absolute disaster of a situation. There’s really no other way to describe the situation. Not allowing teams to fly or travel overnight is an insane overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the FBS teams slated to play Patriot League squads in non-conference play will have to rush to find new opponents.
What an insanely stupid position for the conference to take. We need to be safe and smart, but the travel restrictions are wildly dumb.
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Hopefully, more conferences don’t follow this unnecessary standard set by the Patriot League during the coronavirus pandemic.