There will be no high school football in Michigan this fall.
With the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and no vaccine in sight, the representative council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association met Friday and chose to move the 2020 football season to the spring of 21.
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” At the end of the day, we did everything we could to find a course forward for football this fall,” MHSAA executive director Mark Uyl said. “But while continuing to connect with the Governors workplace, state health department authorities, our member schools personnel and the council, there is just excessive unpredictability and a lot of unknowns to play football this fall.
” No one wants to take the risk of COVID being handed down due to the fact that of a high-risk sport. Choices have actually to be made on our other sports also, however none of those carry the same close, consistent, and face-to-face contact as football.”
The MHSAA, however, intends to maintain its other fall sports, most especially volley ball and girls swimming, which have not had the ability to practice in school gyms or swimming pools due to Gov. Grethen Whitmers Phase 4 policies and Executive Order 160.
Girls and boys cross-country, ladies golf (Lower Peninsula), kids soccer, boys tennis and ladies golf are likewise played in the fall.
When virtually all of the college teams in the state moved their football seasons into the spring, the MHSAA was required into a corner.
Since of the pandemic, no high school event has been played in Michigan given that March 11, when the MHSAA stopped all unfinished state tournaments with hopes of completing them at a later date.
Those competitions were never ever finished and none of the spring sports had the ability to have a single contest.
Some consideration was offered to swapping the fall sports with the spring sports, which are all held outdoors. But Uyl did not wish to run the risk of an abrupt uptick in the coronavirus would wipe out their seasons for a 2nd straight year.
The relocation of football to the spring might imply some of the states leading gamers who are planning to graduate early in order to enlist in college in January– Clarkstons Rocco Spindler (Notre Dame), West Bloomfields Donovan Edwards, Detroit Cass Techs Raheem Anderson (Michigan), Clarkstons Garrett Dellinger (LSU), East Lansings Andrel Anthony Jr. (Michigan)– will not play their senior seasons of high school football.
If colleges playing their seasons in the spring will accept early enrollees due to scholarship limitations, it is not understood.
Exactly when in the spring the football season will occur remains a secret. It will require a 14-week window if the MHSAA permits two weeks of preseason practice, 6 routine season video games instead of 9 but enables everybody in the state playoffs.
That will significantly cut into the spring sport season, whose tournaments could be extended into July.
Mick McCabe is a previous longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Conserve $10 on his new book, “Mick McCabes Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigans Best High School Players, Teams & & Memories,” by purchasing today at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.
The Free Press has actually begun a new digital subscription design. Heres how you can gain access to our most special high school sports content. Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1.
