The Southwestern Athletic Conference on Monday became the most recent FCS league to cancel its 2020 football season in the midst of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, with plans to play all fall sports in the spring.
SWAC school presidents voted on Monday to delay all fall sports to the spring. Notwithstanding football, it likewise impacts men’s and women’s crosscountry, volleyball and women’s soccer.
The SWAC joins the Ivy League, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and Patriot League, among others, with postponing fall sports until at any rate the spring. That implies no football in 2020 for Alabama State or Alabama A&M, two schools whose projects go back to the early part of the 20th century and who meet each season in the Magic City Classic.
The Magic City Classic was last stopped in 1943 and 1944, during the height of World War II. The 2020 Classic was set for Oct. 31 at Legion Field in Birmingham.
Notwithstanding how it influences the Hornets and Bulldogs, no SWAC football likewise implies the undoing of various non-gathering games for in-state schools. Reddish-brown was set to have Alcorn State and Troy was booked to invite Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Sept. 5, while South Alabama’s opener Sept. 12 versus Grambling State at spic and span Hancock Whitney Stadium has additionally been rejected.
The SWAC is the third gathering with schools in Alabama to drop fall sports in 2020, after the Division II SIAC (Miles, Tuskegee) and the Division III SAA (Birmingham-Southern).
