Tracking COVID-19's Impact on the 2020 College Baseball Season
Boston College announced that all home sporting events will be held without fans.
Yesterday, among other things, Boston College closed its doors and moved to online learning while announcing that all athletic events will be held without spectators. They followed a plethora of schools around the country both shutting down on-campus classes and activities and restricting attendance at sporting events.
As you’d expect, the sports world has been turned upside down by the fast-spreading virus. The NBA suspended its season after a player tested positive for Rudy Gobert. The NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournament’s will be played without fans. The Ivy League quickly acted to cancel the rest of its spring athletics season. The list goes on (see the list below from @BryanDFischer), but quite simply, I don’t know how this is going to play out.
For now, I’ll continue to provide coverage of the Eagles, and decided to take this newsletter to look throughout the rest of the ACC landscape and see what programs are deciding to do.
Boston College
University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J. sent an email at 5:17 p.m. announcing that the school would cancel on-campus classes, move to online instruction, and require students to vacate their rooms by Sunday night.
1) Cancel all on-campus classes, effective tomorrow, March 12, through the end of the semester, including finals, and move to online instruction starting Thursday, March 19;
2) Close University residence halls and require students to vacate their rooms starting Thursday, March 12, at 3:00 p.m., and ending Sunday, March 15, at 9:00 p.m. Those who cannot return to their homes because of international travel restrictions, serious personal reasons, or University obligations must obtain written permission from the Office of Residential Life to remain in University housing. (They will likely need to relocate from their current room or apartment);
3) Suspend on-campus academic events as well as University-sponsored travel to international and domestic locations, unless approved by the Provost, Executive Vice President, or the Office of the President.
That was followed roughly two hours later by the athletics department sending out an “Update Regarding Coronoavirus (COVID-19)” that all Eagles’ home games would be played without spectators, including this weekend’s Hockey East quarterfinals series with Providence.
Rest of the ACC
Here’s a look at what the rest of the ACC’s schools have decided. As far as I could tell, only Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Miami remain open and holding classes in person. Clemson cited that it was prepared to move online if it needed too, Georgia Tech is resisting pressure to close, and Miami is resuming classes after Spring Break as scheduled next Monday. As of Thursday morning, it seemed that BC was the only school to provide an announcement about sporting events.
Baseball America has been tracking announcements from college programs, and BC is the only ACC team that finds itself on the list. The Eagles are heading to Raleigh, N.C., this weekend to take on North Carolina State in a three-game weekend series. The Wolfpack are selling tickets on its website, but we’ll see if there’s a similar announcement regarding spectators.
